What You See is What You Eat.

I know I said in my first post that there would be no cupcake reviews because of the general insanity of the cupcake craze and my disbelief and mild disgust of it … but I should have known better. This is LA, the second home of the cupcake craze. Of course there will be cupcakes to be eaten — at birthday parties, office parties, pool parties (I guess; never been to one, so this is something I am making up based on my preconceived notions of pool parties circa 1970s Alvy Singer), etc. As long as I am eating one, I might as well review it …

The occasion here was my girlfriend’s birthday. Coming home late and remembering on my way home, I had to do something, fast, to make like I knew it was her day all along and that I was apologetic for working late on this blessed day. It was 9:30ish. The only place that I could think of was Crumbs.

Crumbs is very different than Sprinkles. Very different. Where Sprinkles is minimalist, dour (brown, dark pastel colors), has lead-like walls to shroud its interior, forces an entrance through one door, an ordering system in which you ask for cupcakes in an assembly-line fashion, and seemingly encourages hushed whispers of “What’s that flavor again?”, Crumbs is LOUD. The colors are LOUD (bright yellows, pinks, etc). The presentation is LOUD – you can see the cupcakes and baked goods from the sidewalk; everyone walks in and huddles together. There generally is no implied or explicit order to ordering. The people working there are LOUD (“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THAT MOVIE YET – OH HI CAN I HELP YOU LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANY HELP – REALLY? THAT MOVIE WAS SO GOOD.”).

And the cupcakes. Embodying its home, the cupcakes at Sprinkles are quiet. They generally have the cupcake base with the ganache frosting, capped off with a simple, simple dot that apparently is a trademark of some sort. Their flavors are simple and short (i.e., “chocolate marshmallow”).

The cupcakes at Crumbs are not quiet. The flavors and names depart from Sprinkle’s strategy of concise titling: “Devil Dog Cupcake”; “Fluffernutter Cupcake”; etc. Where Sprinkles has a simple dot, Crumbs has dots and more, from peanut butter pieces to chocolate chips to marshmellows. This is your poorly conceived Coldstone ice cream cup as compared to the classic stuff from Mitchell’s ice cream. This is Sprinkles’ rebellious, and more too-cool-for-school-and-majoring-in-abstract-art younger sister.

I picked up a few flavors (Neapolitan, raspberry, a strawberry shortcake type cupcake). I only caught pictures of the Neapolitan, above, before the others were consumed.

Here is the inside, when cut:

You could see that they tried to capture the three different Neapolitan flavors in one comprehensive cupcake. Generally, a very good deal. However, truth be told, the differences between the flavors was very, very subtle. It could be that the frostings were not different, only the coloring of the frosting. In any case, the cake part of “cupcake” was moist and comprised of both chocolate and vanilla, but I couldn’t really distinguish between the two either. Overall, very, very good cupcake; more cakey than the one at Sprinkles, but better because it doesn’t taste like it was out of a Betty Crocker box. The buttercream frosting wasn’t too sweet; neither was the cake. In fact, they complemented each other pretty well. Together, it was pretty damn good.

Each cupcake was $3.25. As I say, the cupcake was pretty damn good, but not that good. I feel this way for all cupcakes thus far that are over $2.50ish. $3.25 could buy you a lot. An In-N-Out burger, for example. This cupcake was worth maybe $2.50, maybe. $3.25 is a lot for a cupcake, no matter how good it is.

Sidenote: I did take one bite out of the raspberry swirl cupcake, and boy, was that vanilla buttercream frosting super sickeningly sweet. That one bite was the only bite I could handle; it was that sweet. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Crumbs Bake Shop
9465 Little Santa Monica Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 550-9811
Open M-Thu 8am!! – 10pm
F 8am!! – 11pm !!
Sat 9am – 11pm
Sun 9am – 10pm
I guess they get a lot of orders in the mornings and late at night.
Also location on Larchmont.