cupcakes | A is for Austin

It wasn’t that long ago that cupcakes were limited to to baby showers and classroom birthday parties.

Now that cupcakes are hot (pardon the pun), it seems like every other strip mall and street has a shop offering some version of the cupcake. Some are just passable, with a taste and texture you would expect from the plastic-encased grocery store variety. And some are worth breaking your diet for.

Cupprimo Cupcakes and Coffee is definitely in the latter category. This little shop located in a slightly rundown Northwest Austin strip mall dominated by Asian and Indian groceries and restaurants is a tiny oasis of warm welcomes and sweet options. Everything from the wood tables to the family-photos-turned-art on the walls (from local studio Natural Impressions Photography) invite you to sit down for a bit and savor your choices. Owner Amy Brown and her welcoming staff will treat you more like friends than customers…which is probably why so many people head back to Cupprimo again and again.

My daughter is partial to the Snickerdoodle cupcakes…and yes, they do taste just like the classic cookie! That’s except when she decides on the Smores cupcakes, complete with a fluffy marshmallow frosting, chocolate garnish and rich graham cracker taste. Or maybe the Italian Cream. With 150 flavors to choose from, we have clearly just scratched the surface of possible choices.

Other plus for Cupprimo: they offer a daily gluten-free cupcake, and usually have some “neked” cupcakes on hand (sans frosting) for those of us who like our treats a little less sweet. Most evenings they’re open until 9, so consider stopping by for dessert or an after the movies treat.

It’s not often you’ll see me put something into both “Ice Cream, Sweets and Treats” and “Healthy”, but when I tasted the treats at Better Bites Bakery, there was no doubt that they deserved double billing.

First, there’s the taste. I sampled two of their choices. The first one was dark and rich. Chocolatey. The second was bursting with pumpkin flavor. Both were without question sweet treats.

The twist comes in the way bakers Leah and Crystal bake these scrumptious treats. Much to the surprise of my dairy-and-wheat-loving taste buds, all of their baked goods are made without a trace of dairy or a smidgen of gluten!

WHAT????? How could it be? These were not the saw-dust textured, oddly flavored pseudo-baked goods I associate with gluten-free. They were tasty (in fact, they still are…I bought two brownies to bring home, and I’m eating one now…trust me, my keyboard is well crumbed at the moment!) Clearly, these two women know something the rest of the “healthy” baking world has missed!

The great thing is you can have their cupcakes, brownies, cakes and more delivered almost anywhere in Austin. And they are more than willing to create exactly what you need, from cupcakes for a meeting to a cake for a birthday party. They’ll even do healthy, yummy cupcake trees for weddings.

The bad news is that for the most part, you need to plan ahead. Better Bites Bakery doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar location (although you can get their treats at a few locations around town, like the People’s RX.) But that’s okay…once you order once, odds are you’ll want to order again and again.