Friday, October 10, 2008

Flourish Bakery Café

1138 W Bryn Mawr, Chicago, IL


Yellow cupcake with plain buttercream frosting

Price: $1.49

Weight: 3 3/4 oz (106g)

Value: $0.397/oz

Frosting The frosting is so light, soft and pillowy that you can literally lick it off the cupcake like you're eating an ice cream cone, rather than having to bite into it. Like my favorite frostings, it has a grainy texture and only a very slightly greasy feel . Rating 9.5/10

Cake Normally I try to get a chocolate cupcake with plain frosting, but they didn't have any this day. (They had chocolate/chocolate, but I decided to go for the plain frosting rather than the chocolate cake.) The yellow cake was very soft and moist. It had a nice flavor, but the only possible negative thing I would say is that it tasted perhaps a little too much like a cake you might get from a Duncan Hines cake mix, and it still had a somewhat "batter-like" taste. Rating 8.0/10

Overall
I just recently discovered this bakery/cafe while driving around in Edgewater. My first trip back was to have a sandwich (turkey, bacon & Swiss on cranberry-pecan bread, with fruit chutney, which was excellent), and I drooled over the pastries and baked goods.

I really like this place. It's large, bright, clean and happy, and the staff is very friendly and helpful. I'm only somewhat familiar with the area, but I think the stretch of Bryn Mawr where Flourish is located, between Broadway and Sheridan, has gone through a little renaissance over the past few years. (I'm told Flourish has been there for about 3 years.) The neighborhood still has some lingering elements of its former "sketchiness," but aside from the wandering local half-way house residents, for the most part it seems to be well into the up-side of up-and-coming.

As for the cupcake, overall it was very, very nice. I especially liked the frosting, and there's no doubt I'll be going back try the chocolate version. Probably today.
Overall Rating 8.75/10.0

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love cupcakes, too. Thanks for sharing this blog!