Atlanta Cupcake Tour, Part 2 of 7: Sweet Pockets
October 22, 2008
The timing for our Atlanta cupcake tasting wasn’t very well scheduled. Lindsay and I spent the afternoon visiting a few cupcakeries all at once and stowed our collection away for a tasting later in the day. However, before the cupcake tasting, we had a pizza tasting to attend. We were lucky enough to be invited to taste Jeff Varasano’s Famous NY Pizza which amazingly was made in his home oven (I’m too busy with cupcakes right now, but I need to revisit this topic at some point because it was too awesome an experience not to write about). So our gluttonous night basically consisted of tasting 12 different amazing pizzas and then tasting various cupcakes. We are pigs, it’s true.
During the pizza party, we were talking with a fellow taster who bluntly informed us that all cupcakeries in Atlanta were awful. She noted that West Egg’s Black Bottom Cupcake was good, and the only reliable cupcake in town. Of course we just had brunch there and failed to pick up a cupcake. Go figure.
Obviously we were not so happy to receive this information after spending a bunch of money on cupcakes and waiting all day to try them. We drove home after the pizza tasting convincing ourselves that she must be wrong.
The cupcakes we tasted that night were from The Atlanta Cupcake Factory, Sweet Pockets and Belly General Store. You’ll have to wait for the coming days to hear what we thought of the rest of them - today I’m concentrating on Sweet Pockets. But before I get started, I feel the need to re-post my disclaimer:
Disclaimer: I want to say for the record that I take no joy in having to bash pastries, so if you are a fan of or associated with any bakeries that I had a bad experience with, I apologize for any hurt feelings and am only trying to tell it like it is so that my fellow chocolate peanut butter addicts can find the very best treats that are available.
SWEET POCKETS 660 Irwin St SE, Atlanta GA 30312 4338 Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta GA 30339
CUPCAKES TASTED: (from left to right)
- Chocolate Vegan (Chocolate CC w/ Chocolate Frosting)
- Blonde (Vanilla CC w/ Vanilla Frosting)
- Pumpkin
- Monkey (Banana and Peanut Butter)
- Cookies and Cream
The two highly anticipated cupcakes of the bunch were the Cookies and Cream and the Monkey. This is the Monkey by the way… looks good right?
I was also curious to try the Chocolate Vegan as it looked delicious and in my experience, tasty store-bought vegan baked goods are hard to come by. For some reason I’m still convinced they’re out there.
The Cookies and Cream icing was good and as Lindsay pointed out, tasted like Cookies and Cream Ice Cream. Sadly this is one of the very few nice things I am able to say about our Sweet Pockets experience.
Their cupcakes are also adorable and perfect looking. They were even dressed with cute little nametags in the case.
Man, did they have us fooled. All five cake flavors were extremely dry and disappointing. The Monkey was especially disappointing - I’m not sure that I have ever tasted a banana flavored baked good that was as dry as their banana cake.
Sadly their vegan cupcake let me down as well. Like the others, the chocolate cake was dry and as Ryan pointed out, “almost completely flavorless”. The frosting had an odd flavor that I’m not even going to try and spend time analyzing, since it became pretty apparent during the tasting process that none of us will be returning.
I’m sorry Sweet Pockets, but these cupcakes were as bland as your store front.
At least we had some cupcakes from The Atlanta Cupcake Factory and Belly General Store on-hand as back-up desserts. How did they fare? Stay tuned in the coming days for more Atlanta pastry coverage!
For previous stops on the Atlanta Cupcake Tour, check out Part 1 of 7: The Highland Bakery