My New Chimerical Kit

Today just happens to be National Cupcake Day and in commemoration I trotted over to Lola’s Cookies in Leesburg and purchased two of their special holiday cupcakes. The fame of Lola’s Cookies has reached far beyond our little community. The Washingtonian and Northern Virginia touting their cookies. Lola’s has made appearances on The Rachel Ray Show! No longer is Lola’s a best kept secret in historic downtown Leesburg…

When we arrived at Lola’s they weren’t aware that it was National Cupcake Day. It didn’t take too long before the spread the word on their Facebook page though. I was very excited to see this post:

I knew that we’d be assured a pretty awesome cupcake from Lola’s, and we really weren’t disappointed. We got a gingerbread cupcake and a chocolate peppermint cupcake.

The Traveling Cupcake Box

First, we must discuss the packaging. Cupcake bakeries nearly always have a special way of packaging their goods to go. This is entirely part of the experience. Lola’s has some beautiful boxes with the little cupcake cut-outs to keep each cupcake “safe” in it’s own little cup. We have had a previously terrible experience with these boxes in the past (cupcake suicide bomber). Fortunately, Lola’s boxes worked out better in the past. However, the general observation that we made was that the size of the cupcake has a huge impact on how well the box worked. The gingerbread cupcake was a tad larger than the chocolate peppermint one; thus the cupcake holder nearly decapitated the icing off of the chocolate peppermint cupcake. Luckily we were able to save it by delicately disassembling the cupcake holder. All in all the box gets a 6 out of 10.

Gingerbread Cupcake

Lola’s gingerbread cupcake is described as a “wintertime treat features lemon cream-cheese frosting and is topped with a tiny gingerbread man cookie.” The icing was also garnished with a nice dusting of sugar.

First, the cake to icing ratio was perfect. Couldn’t have been done better. The gingerbread cake was flavored nicely, but could have been a tad moister. I thought the icing had a lovely flavor… I wouldn’t have thought of adding a lemon cream-cheese frosting to gingerbread, but it really made the taste of the ginger pop. If it had been me, I would have used a tiny bit more dusting sugar… I love dusting sugar! Sadly, the most disappointing feature of the gingerbread cupcake was the gingerbread man. He was so cute, being affixed at a jaunty little angle. But he was kind of chewy. And not chewy in a good kind of gingerbread way. It could just be personal preference, or it could just be because he was stuck to the top of the icing and soaked up some of the moisture from the icing… I don’t know. Despite the chewy gingerbread man and the slight dryness of the cake we give Lola’s Gingerbread cupcake an 8 out of 10.

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcake

Oh, the Chocolate Peppermint Cupcake…. oh…. heaven! I believe that the Chocolate Peppermint Cupcake is a new flavor, as it is not featured on their website. The cake portion of the cupcake was delightfully moist with an excellent peppermint flavor. The word “decadent” comes to mind. I thought that the icing to cake ratio was slightly high to the icing, but because it wasn’t incredibly sweet it really didn’t make a terrible impact. The icing was garnished with red “Jimmies.” Now, I’m a hard-core “sprinkles” girl, so I usually don’t go for anything that has Jimmies on it. However, I was not offended by the Jimmies topping the Chocolate Peppermint Cupcake. Alone, I could have done without them, but as part of the total package they were quite good. All-in-all I was incredibly impressed with this cupcake. I have to give it a 9, leading to 9.5, out of 10!

The Perfect Cupcake Chaser

Lola’s Cookies is called Lola’s Cookies for a reason. They are the masters of cookies. And by masters… I mean MASTERS. They are brilliant. And the cookie that I think is the epitome of their perfect cookie is their Mocha Midnights. And I’m shocked, utterly shocked, that they are not listed on the website’s “top cookies” section!

Sometimes, you can get a little bit of a sugar overload when you’re eating cupcakes. Lola’s Mocha Midnights is the perfect chaser to combat an overly sweet cupcake. These little deep mocha gems are so perfect. Squished in their center is a nonpareil (with real sprinkles). And there’s this intense burst of flavor when you bite into it, and surprisingly there’s a hint of salt!

A Mocha Midnight makes the best cupcake chaser there is.

Related Posts

• December 15, 2009 -- Happy National Cupcake Day!