East End Cupcakes

Yesterday was the opening day for East End Cupcakes (formally Buttercup Cupcakes) located at 426 Fore Street. I ordered cupcakes from them for an Oscars party I was attending earlier this year. I decided that pear cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream would be a fantastic choice for such an event.

Those two photos were taken by Joel Desmond of the Maine Effect.

The pear cupcakes had a puree of pear at the bottom and the buttercream was the most amazing "frosting" that I have ever had on a cupcake. It was so good that I would just eat the buttercream off the cupcakes first. I managed to eat at least half of the dozen pear cupcakes that I ordered. It was after doing so and also the fact that I was quite upset once I had consumed the last one, that I realized just how good these cupcakes are. East End Cupcakes specialty flavors are definitely an adults cupcake or specifically aimed for those who have a higher standard in cupcake quality.

Last night at their soft opening, a friend and I shared two of the cupcakes that were available that night. I think that there were five different flavors available last night and the owner mentioned that they will normally have four standard flavors with four specialty flavors also available. We decided on trying the chocolate cupcake with salted caramel buttercream and the chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream.

Chocolate cupcake with salted caramel

Chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream

I was interested in seeing how the normal flavors were going to compare to the impressive pear with vanilla bean buttercream. Both of the chocolate cakes had a rich chocolate flavor, but were slightly dry. I preferred the salted caramel buttercream over the vanilla, which had an overwhelming butter flavor to it with very little vanilla in comparison. Both of the buttercreams were light, much lighter than I remember the vanilla bean buttercream being. I quite frankly prefer the pear cupcakes with the vanilla bean buttercream to these chocolate cupcakes, so I look forward to when they have more of their special flavors available. Nevertheless, the cupcakes were both good last night and well worth the $2.50 we spent for each one.

It will be interesting to see how the space transitions over time, but I thought that the current layout was quite adorable and it had a lot of seating available. I love the idea that there is now a shop in the Old Port that is devoted entirely to cupcakes and that it is right next to Gorgeous Gelato. I will be making frequent visits to East End Cupcakes to continue trying different flavors and highly recommend others to make the trip down to the Old Port to do the same.