Final Destination: Cupcake Overload!

For our final stop on the cupcake express, we chose to patronize Whole Foods, 525 N Lamar Blvd. Most people know what Whole Foods is, so I won't give a history or description of the store. I will admit that I was extremely wary as the one prior time I'd been to the Whole Foods bakery, I tasted a lemon cupcake that was mediocre and sampled some birthday cake that was worse.
For a corporation, Whole Foods does seem to want to do the right thing and I've had some pretty tasty food inside their store in the past. I remembered them having very fancy and beautiful cupcakes in their bakery. We made our way through the store's maze and got to the bakery, which was packed with people and understaffed. V and I decided we were enamored with the idea of the boston creme cupcake and the cinnamon bun cupcake.
I had been despairing of finding a great cupcake at this point. I wanted something to blow me away and nothing was.

Whole Foods' boston creme cupcake blasted me into another galaxy. This was a cupcake in a league of its own. I was ecstatic and said,"there's nothing wrong with this one. It's 100 points out of 100." It was a layer of thick, rich fudge topping covering a moist, yellow cupcake filled with a wonderful vanilla cream. V especially liked the fudge frosting. This was my favorite of all the cakes we tasted.
The cinnamon bun cupcake was no disappointment either. It had a super delectable cream cheese topping that perfectly mixed flavors of cream cheese, cinnamon and plump raisins. The cake part was moist and I had to marvel at the crumb of it. This cake had the exact texture and taste of a cinnamon bun. I'm not sure how they pulled this off, but it was truly superb. It was V's favorite cupcake of the day and she stated, "if I ever get married, I'd love to have these as my wedding cake." Again, a perfect dessert with no flaws. I think Vixi wrapped it up succinctly when she said, "It's great that we saved the best for last."
We did the entire cupcake crawl in one afternoon and by the end, we were practically green at the gills from all the sugar. I definitely felt in a stupor. With all the to go containers in the back of my car, it looked like the car of misfit cupcakes. This was great fun and we'll be doing more types of food crawls in the future, so stay tuned. A big thanks to my pal Vixi Edina, who learned that being a food critic is all fun and games until you've eaten too much.
Here are Fried Zen's cupcake ratings:

1st Place: Whole Foods: By a landslide! These were so tasty, I'm already craving them again. For the sake of my waistline, I'll try to hold off. But I'll definitely be back again.

2nd Place: Central Market: I'd definitely make a return visit for the red velvet cupcake and I'm also eager to try some of their other treats.

3rd Place: Quack's Bakery: I could dig one of their carrot cake cupcakes with a mug of coffee or green tea, their eclairs also look delish and I'd love to give those bad boys a try.

Last Place: Hey Cupcake!: Sorry, but next time for us it's going to be No Thanks, Cupcake. This place is annoying and blah, but most of all, there's just no excuse for bad ingredients. In all fairness, we did notice that many of the customers appeared to be getting their carrot cake cupcakes, which looked like they might have a different type of icing and taste better, but with all the good cupcake options in town, it will be a very distant future before we'll be ready to risk this place again.