Eating my way through Washington, D.C.

I’m back and full of cupcakes!  Last week was Spring Break, and I got to visit my brother in Washington, D.C.!  I had a great week of visiting monuments and museums, watching basketball games, and catching up with friends and family.  I also ate myself silly at some amazing restaurants and did some baking recon around our nation’s capital. 

My brother took me to several delicious restaurants (including the Jose Andres restaurants Jaleo and Zaytinia, for Spanish and Greek tapas respectively – yum!), but my favorite was Brasserie Beck’s.  I actually wanted to take this chef home with me and eat his cooking every day.  I’m generally unfamiliar with Belgian food (except for waffles and chocolate), but I loved everything I ate there, especially the mussels!  There are no words for food like that.  So, so good.    

On the sweeter side of things, I realized shortly after my arrival that Sticky Fingers, the vegan bakery that recently won Cupcake Wars, was located just around the corner from my brother’s apartment!  With a little help (it’s not too hard to find people to share cupcakes with you), I tried all of the winning cupcakes, and they were every bit as beautiful and delicious as they looked on TV. 

From there, I decided that I should test out a few more DC bakeries as well.  On Monday, I went to Warren Brown’s Cake Love and its sister sit-down coffee house, Love Café.  The barista recommended a pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese icing, and she didn’t steer me wrong.  It was a delicious afternoon snack along with my latte.  I received Warren Brown’s cookbook United Cakes of America for Christmas, so it was a fun treat to test out one of his recipes in person!

My next stop on the cupcake tour was a cupcake truck called Curbside Cupcakes.  We split a Black Irish Cream cupcake (it was close to St. Patrick’s Day) and a vanilla cupcake.  The specialty one really took the cake so to speak, but the vanilla wasn’t bad either.  And the customer service was great!  They even posed for a cheesy, touristy picture for me! 

I also tested out the chocolate hazelnut cupcake from Crumbs bakery, which was good but enormous!  My companions munched on a cookies ‘n’ cream cupcake and an Artie Lange – vanilla cake, chocolate cream cheese filling, topped with vanilla cream cheese dipped in chocolate fondant.  Neither of them were complaining. 

The last bakery I tried was Hello, Cupcake!  I had the Princess cupcake (vanilla cake with strawberry frosting) and my cupcake accomplice had another cookies ‘n’ cream.  They were my least favorite on the cupcake tour, but had some cute decorating ideas for their other cupcakes. 

On Saturday morning, we had brunch at Co Co. Sala, which is a whole restaurant based around chocolate.  It was a great culmination to my week of dining indulgence!  We had some fancy, not-quite-cupcake desserts there, but I thought I'd share the pictures anyway. 

It was a great week, and I can’t wait to go back soon.  Believe it or not, there were restaurants and bakeries that I missed!