Lavender Moon Cupcakery

The DC area has an over-abundance of cupcake shops, much to my delight. Someone has to go and try each and every one, and I am more than willing to take one for the team in this case.

My sister is coming into town this weekend, and to celebrate I popped out to Old Town and walked down to what is, so far, my favorite of the many cupcake shops around; Lavender Moon. I decided between the two of us, four cupcakes would be plenty... at least for the first night.

Now, I tend to be a traditionalist when it comes to cupcakes. Rosewater? Lilac? No thank you, I'll take my chocolate with chocolate, and a little more chocolate if you've got it. Thank you very much. And Lavender Moon does not disappoint, with plenty of delicious flavors that they rotate through. For this trip I decided on four different flavors

• Flourless Chocolate with Almonds and Sea Salt
• Chocolate with Peanut Butter
• S'mores
• Blood Orange Dreamsicle

I'm kind of sucker for flourless chocolate anything. So rich, so dense, so delicious. Lavender Moon has a good variation here. Though we were both expecting a little more from the 'almonds and sea salt' part of that cupcake. While it was a perfectly good chocolate cupcake, these two flavors could have used a bit more representation.

Now, I don't do peanut butter (yes, I know, it's weird. I'm sorry). So this one was all for my sister. Her first words after taking a bite, "Wow. Peanut butter." I assume that's a good thing when one buys a chocolate peanut butter cupcake.

The s'mores cupcake is by far one of my favorites from Lavender Moon. That meringue-y marshmallow-y frosting? Oh. My. Goodness. Light and fluffy and the thin layer of brulee'd frosting is just perfect. Possibly my second favorite cupcake topping ever (The first is a certain boiled frosting, more on that at some point I'm sure). The cupcakes here have always been soft and moist, unlike certain other cupcake shops I've been too *cough cough* Georgetown Cupcakes *cough cough*.

And finally, the last cupcake. Yes, yes, I know. Blood Orange Dreamsicle? No chocolate at all. This was my 'reach' cupcake of the purchase. After all, I could be proven wrong. Fancy new cupcake flavors could in fact be just as good, in their own right, as the chocolatey goodness that I tend to prefer. The cake part of this cupcake was, actually, very good. Light and airy, a nice citrus-y flavor. While the frosting was good, both my sister and I thought it over powered the lightness of the cupcake just a tad. 

In the end I would give Lavender Moon an A for the cake part of the cupcakes. As for the frostings, the marshmallow on the s'mores was by far my favorite. If you enjoy a good buttercream, the others were good too. Personally I prefer a lighter icing, possibly due to too much buttercream as a child...