Celebrity Cupakes review.

We've tried just about every cupcake bakery we've ever come across in Houston, Austin, and London, including Houston's Sugarbaby's and Crave (and cupcakes from places like Whole Foods, as well). No cupcake we'd had here was worth buying again (or even finishing), and so we had low expectations for the new Celebrity Cupcakes. Although its name was already one strike against it, we bought three cupcakes and crossed our fingers that we wouldn't regret it.

Let's start with the bad. The customer service there wasn't great. We asked for the fleur de sel cupcake, and even though we could see that the cupcakes were almost ready, the woman at the counter didn't offer to frost one for us or tell us how long we would have to wait for one. Instead, she indicated that we should just pick something else. And no one seemed too thrilled to be working there, so we felt just slightly uncomfortable as we debated what flavors we wanted to take home with us.

Since we couldn't have the fleur de sel, we bought a carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting, a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter filling and chocolate frosting, and a vanilla bean cupcake with chocolate frosting.

After tasting these, I would never consider buying a cupcake anywhere else in Houston. At the other bakeries, the frosting is too sugary or the cake is too dry, but everything we tried from Celebrity Cupcakes was perfect. The chocolate frosting on the vanilla cake tasted just like a bar of chocolate and was one of the few vanilla cupcakes I've had that wasn't bland. The chocolate cupcake was moist with delicious frosting, but I think I would have preferred it without the peanut butter filling. It tasted too much like the inside of a Jif jar. Not awful, but it was a pretty aggressive taste, so I can't remember too much about other aspects of the cupcake. We all agreed that the carrot cake was the best one (although we would eat any of them again). Even the worst bakeries usually don't mess up cream cheese frosting, but the carrot cake was particularly flavorful. I do wish that the bakery would have some more unusual flavors (like blackbottom or lemon blueberry/lemon raspberry), but, still, the ones they do have are good.

$3.25 does seem like a lot for a cupcake, even though that's almost a standard price now, but since we probably shouldn't be eating whole ones or eating cupcakes too frequently, it isn't a prohibitive cost.

Also: I'm always tempted by red velvet cake, but I've never had any that was worth finishing (which doesn't mean, sadly, that I didn't finish it anyway). I can't shake the feeling that it's watered-down chocolate cake -- and not light in a pleasant way, but light in the way that makes you wonder who left out an ingredient. I understand that a lot of people love it, but I wonder how much of that is because of the color or nostalgia or other personal associations. Or just the frosting.

Making up for the lost/last year.

A highlight of summers in London was buying blue and red aerogrammes and sending long letters in cramped handwriting back to friends in the States. One had only a limited amount of space for writing, so it was vital to make every word count. (I didn't know about cross-writing then, but I certainly would have tried it if I had.)

I still have a nostalgic attraction to airmail patterns on stationery, but I almost never buy paper because, sadly, I don't write too many letters anymore. Maybe most people don't have the patience now, but I really love toting incomplete letters around with me and adding to them throughout the week. And finding a new email in my inbox, while still exciting, just can't compare to sorting through the mail and finding a letter I've anticipated for ages.

So when I saw these notebooks at UO a few weeks ago, I bought them immediately. Usually I don't spend money on notebooks because the only ones worth buying always seem too exquisite to risk spoiling with writing. But these were cheap, and I bought two of them so that I wouldn't have to worry about possibly ruining one. While it's a little silly to have the "par avion" on the front there (one isn't, after all, mailing the notebook as is), who really cares? It reminds me of all those thrilling summer letters.

I neglected to record almost anything I did last year (except, of course, in emails), and so now I'm catching up. I finally finished reading the last of Dickens's novels, and that's worth writing down, isn't it? As I was trying to remember the books I read in the first half of 2009, a visitor wandered by. I tapped on the glass a few times, and he finally consented to turn around.

And of course one has to have an afternoon treat. Houston has a dismal cupcake scene (and where does one get really fine cake?), but these red velvet cupcakes from Starbucks are decent.

I know it has a cult following, but red velvet cake must be one of the most disappointing cakes of all time. You can never go wrong with cream cheese icing (even the worst bakeries generally seem to get it right), but the cake itself just doesn't have enough flavor for me. Anyway, although I wouldn't go out of my way to have one of these cupcakes, I can't say that I didn't enjoy it just a little. Especially on such a cheerful plate.