Pumpkin Cupcake, Hummingbird Bakery

Before this (spoiler: glowing) review gets your hopes up, I'm sorry to report that this cupcake isn't available at Hummingbird Bakery anymore. However, there are a bunch of new cupcakes that look awesome, and the pumpkin whoopie pie has the same components, just stacked differently.

My husband picked these up, so I'm not sure at what point one of the cupcakes nearly upturned, while the other one inexplicably stayed perfectly still. I'm assuming he used some sort of voodoo, or perhaps another form of black magic. Funny enough, when I lifted the bent one out, the frosting sort of slid back onto the cake. More compelling evidence that our marriage is a case of reverse Bewitched. Well, as long as the cupcakes keep coming I don't mind.

Oh, these cupcakes are right tasty. I'll start with the cream cheese frosting, which comprises about 45 percent of the cake. This is a perfect example of cream cheese frosting if you ask me, very thick, tangy, and sweet. This stands in comparison with the cream cheese frosting at Bea's...while lovely, it wasn't traditional. Bea's seems to maybe mix their cream cheese frosting with whipped cream, taking away from the sweetness and tang. This is straight up cream cheese, powdered sugar, and uh, that's it. Great balance between the tastes, though! The texture is also perfect, not crunchy or runny. Good news is, the pumpkin whoopie pie has the same frosting. Nice.

When it comes to pumpkin cake, its the same story as any pumpkin flavored thing--what you're really tasting is pumpkin pie spice. Cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, a bit of ginger...warming spices that make me think of Thanksgiving. The pumpkin does however contribute to the moistness of the cake, it reminds me of carrot cake, or banana bread in terms of moisture content. The nicest part of this cake is the springiness, which reminds me a lot of a chiffon cake. So bouncy in your mouth! It feels like if you pressed your finger into the cake it would spring right back. That's a hard texture to attain, usually you end up with something very dry, or something dense and moist. This is light and moist, which in my opinion is an ideal texture for cake. I'm sure this has to do with the pumpkin, because the texture actually reminds me of the bounciness of a pumpkin pie! This was lovely, and I'm sorry to say that it isn't available right now. However, I really think that the whoopie pie would be similar!