Illinois cupcakes and books

I happened to be in the Chicago suburbs for The Great Lace and was able to go to the next town over to walk around with a friend- there happened to be a bookshop and cupcake place almost right next to each other! Of course we had to go to both!

Dark Carnival Bookstore

I went to a bookshop in Berkley called Dark Carnival! They are a scifi, fantasy and horror/mystery theme only bookstore with new and some second hand books. The place definitely embodied that aesthetic from the outside to the arrangement of shelves inside!

Cupcaken' Bake Shop

Long time no blog 🫣 I have actually been going to cupcake places and bookstores in my absence though I usually fail to actually create a writeup of the experience in blog format shortly after... Then just keep putting it off 😓 I pledge to schedule several entries that are mostly done over the next few weeks so that I can clear out my backlog a bit and hopefully start getting motivated to continue visiting more places soon! 

I was able to go to Cupcakin' Bake Shop in Berkley! I went to a location that was a very small shop that was obviously more of a to-go situation. The shop inside was small and had no places to sit if you wanted to eat there. The atmosphere was very clean and white with not a ton of decoration or personality. 

atmosphere: 2/5

I got 4 cupcakes but 2 were for The Blog of course the classic vanilla on vanilla as a control and then the most popular flavor according to the person working was their specialty Key Lime Pie cupcake flavor. The frosting on both was a little too much in ratio for the cake imo. The vanilla frosting was a classic buttercream, a little sugary but not too gritty or too sweet, just too much compared to the cake! The key lime pie one was more of a fluffy texture like a whipped cream almost but more stable and hardly sweet at all. There was a little bit of key lime pie filling topped with whipped topping in the center of the cake then the frosting on top of that. Again there was a lot of topping and not a lot of cake as compared for my liking

Frosting: 3/5

The cakes for both of the cupcakes were really really moist, almost wet in texture though they were baked through, I think this was just the style of cake they were using. I'm not sure I liked it but it was definitely a change from the last couple of places where I had some very dry cake. The Key lime pie flavor lacked even more cake in comparison to frosting as it also had a layer of graham cracker 'crust' at the bottom that was inoffensive tasting and texture wise but I'd have liked to have more cake-cake instead. 

Cake: 2.5/5

Each Cupcake was 4.75 which aligns with my expectation of $3.50-$5 per cupcake. 

Price: 3/5

Overall 2.6/10

If I happened to be downtown and fancied a dessert I'd definitely stop by again but I probably wouldn't make the drive so far from me spesifically for these cupcakes!