Cupcake Challenge LA 2012

This past Saturday I attended Cupcake Challenge LA 2012 for the first time. Drink Eat Play sold out of tickets for the event by Friday so Cupcake Challenge LA was packed but nonetheless amazing! It was fantastic to see so many cupcake connoisseurs, bakeries and bloggers in one room! It was impossible not to have a sweet time at such a tasty event!

I was happy to meet up with Anthony Valerio of Wonderland Custom Cakes. His table happened to be my first stop so we were able to talk about how his bakery has been going since the grand opening and how exciting it was to be a part of Cupcake Challenge LA. My fellow blog pal Lili and I made our way through the line of cupcake crazed fans to each of the bakery stations. We received two cupcakes from each bakery and were asked to vote on our top 3 bakeries. To ensure that every ticket holder received every cupcake each bakery would mark their treats off of our ballots:

Overall we all ended up with 36 cupcakes each. Thank goodness they were all minis, it was already nearly impossible to taste all of them! Because I took over a hundreds pictures I can't post them all here BUT, you can head over to my Flickr account to see them all! I'll also be adding my favorite pictures to the Cupcakes Takes The Cake Flickr Pool. 

After tasting all of the cupcakes (I had to finish the majority of them at home...who can eat 36 mini cupcakes in one sitting?!) I came up with my top 3 bakeries. Though I did have to vote at the event, my top 3 definitely would have stayed the same either way.

Dulcitas Tres Leches Cupcake was my absolute favorite cupcake at the event. It was perfectly cinnamon-y, creamy, moist and just melted in your mouth. In case you don't know, Tres Leches cakes are always wet cakes as they are soaked in a milk.Upon opening the wrapper milk was literally oozing out of the cupcake. I would, without a doubt, be enjoying a full size version of this cupcake sometime  very soon.

My Delight Cupcakery was my second pick with their Red Velvet Raspberry Cheesecake Cupcake only because I couldn't pick two top bakeries. There were several Red Velvet Cupcakes at the event but none of them really spruced it up to create something as incredible as this. All if not most Red Velvet Cupcakes are topped with Cream Cheese Frosting but adding graham cracker 'crumbs and raspberry puree transformed something so simple into something that made our whole table say "Oh my God." after their first bite. I found out that My Delight Cupcakery is near me which means I'll be heading there several times a month!

My final vote went to Bake You Happy for their Chocolate Cherry Licorice Cupcake. This was by far the most unique cupcake I've ever tasted. Upon first glance I was both confused and intrigued, and because we eat with our eyes first I just couldn't wait to taste this! This cupcake was chocolate based with a Red Vine licorice filling. Topped with marshmallow fluff atop a pretzel and covered in a cherry cola glaze. With so many ingredients in this cupcake one might think it would be overly sweet but in fact it wasn't! All the textures made this cupcake's mouthful very enjoyable! Creating such unique flavor combinations proves why this bakery ended up winning an episode of Cupcake Wars!

I had a fantastic time at Cupcake Challenge LA and will definitely be attending the event next year! I'm also going to make an effort to head out to several of the bakeries that attended to interview their owners!

To see all my photos from Cupcake Challenge LA check out my Flickr!