My experience with Starry Night Bakery and Coffeehouse began over a year ago. I was in search of a cupcake place in Westminster. There are plenty in Baltimore City, but living outside of the city I was curious about what local cupcake bakeries my town had to offer. I stumbled upon Starry Night Bakery and Coffeehouse and the reviews seemed good, but considering my cupcake experiences I was skeptical. Their website, while very creative, didn’t give me any details about flavors or even store hours. So one day, on my way home from work, I stopped in.  I was very please with the selection, made a few choices, and brought the cupcakes home. I had mixed feelings about the cupcakes, mainly because one of the flavors had a raspberry filling, but it was way too much filling. I recall that particular cupcake being too sweet between the jam filling and the icing.

Fast-forward to today…I heard about Starry Night’s seasonal selection and was very excited about their Salted Caramel Apple. I’d just tasted Happy Cakes’ and thought if I could get something similar locally, that would be great. I also learned that since my last experience with Starry Night, they were on the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars! Now I was REALLY excited!

I went in and ended up leaving with four cupcakes: Two of the Salted Caramel Apple (one for hubby and one for me) and two of their “Quirky” Cupcakes; a Banana & Chocolate (called Monkey Biznass – or something like that) and their Salty Caramel. I later went back and decided that before reviewing these cupcakes I really should try the other two seasonal flavors, which also sounded delicious, and their Cupcake Wars cupcake, which seemed intriguing.  For the sake of the review, instead of going in chronological order I am going to start with seasonal, quirky, and then end with their Cupcake Wars cupcake.

Seasonal
The Salted Caramel Apple is an apple cake with a salted caramel buttercream.

While this cupcake was delicious, I do think that it could have used more caramel flavor. I’m not a big caramel person, but I do feel like caramel lovers would find it lacking and think that a caramel drizzle could be the solution. Not only would it add flavor, but it would also bump of the decoration and get customers really excited about their seasonal selection. However, the salty with the sweet was worked out perfectly and the apple cake was very good, so all-in-all, a very good cupcake.

The Orange Cranberry is an orange cake with dried cranberries and a buttercream frosting.

The aroma of this cupcake let me know that it was going to be good. I could smell the orange and cranberry and the taste was no different! Again, perfect level of sweetness with the bite of the citrus and cranberries. After tasting this cupcake, I thought it would be my favorite!

Lastly, the Pumpkin Maple is a pumpkin cake with maple buttercream. Yum!

I’m a sucker for maple buttercream, so I was really excited about this. Just like the Orange Cranberry, this cupcake did not lack on delicious aroma or flavor. Everything was balanced perfectly and I even picked up a hint of spice in the cake, maybe cinnamon. I appreciated the creative combination of pumpkin with maple versus the standard creamcheese frosting or plain buttercream typically used on a spice cake. As a seasonal flavor, this one ended up “taking the cake!”

“Quirky” Cupcakes
The Banana & Chocolate is a banana cake with banana filling and chocolate buttercream frosting.

After tasting the banana cream separately I was a little worried that the banana flavor was too artificial, however altogether the flavors really worked to create a perfectly balanced cupcake with all of the banana and chocolate taste you’d expect. The banana cake was excellent!

The Salty Caramel is a chocolate cake with caramel filling and salty caramel buttercream.

I was a little confused by the filling and originally thought it was a chocolate ganche filling. I think this is due to the caramel absorbing into the chocolate cake. As with the Salted Caramel Apple, I think the caramel flavor could have been bumped up a notch, but the salt with the chocolate still really worked and made this cupcake very enjoyable.

It looks like the “Quirky” Cupcake flavors are rotated, but they have some amazing looking combinations. I’m excited to try one that has chocolate and espresso. They also have their standard flavors, but who can even look at those with all the other interesting selections?

Cupcake Wars
As mentioned earlier, I found out that Starry Night was a competitor on Cupcake Wars. I thought this was so cool and wished that I had caught that episode, but sadly I did not and can’t find it online anywhere. While they did not win the competition, they did make it to the final challenge and according to Candance Nelson’s blog, it was a close battle. On my second trip there this week, I decided that it was mandatory to taste their Energy Drink cupcake, that they had created on the show. This cupcake is Ginger Poppyseed with a Quava buttercream. Sounds good to me!

And, it was! While all might not appreciate the floral note to the guava buttercream, I do. It wasn’t overpowering in my opinion and I loved the uniqueness to it. I couldn’t pick up the ginger in the cake, but the poppyseed flavor was delicious and the guava really complimented it well.

Verdict?
I believe that Starry Night has come a long way in a year and that they are a shinny star in the cupcake industry. While there’s room for improvement in terms of bringing some of the flavors out fully, they make a perfectly balanced cupcake with moist cake that will have me coming back for more!

Side Note: Starry Night also has a great coffeehouse selection and they really know how to make a good cup of joe with flavor combinations equal to their cupcakes!

– Posted by Cupcake Crusader, Jenn (Westminster, MD)