Sage (sold by Dean & DeLuca) Hostess Style Chocolate Cupcake

Sage Hostess-Style Cupcake from Dean & DeLuca, $5.00,
http://www.sagegeneralstore.com/ and http://www.deandeluca.com

I have an amazing recipe that I use to make delicious Hostess-style filled cupcakes at home, so I don't usually buy them elsewhere because few cupcakes can live up to my home-baked ones, but as the Cupcake Connoisseur it is my duty to sample what else is out there! So, I tried this Hostess-style cupcake from Sage.

Taste: The chocolate icing is bitter, and not sweet at all, although probably made with real bittersweet chocolate and not cocoa powder, judging by the taste. The cake is also slightly bitter and has not the slightest hint of sweetness and barely any chocolatey taste. The vanilla cream inside the cupcake is bland and not tasty-- it's the same white cream as in the zig-zag on top of the cupcake, and its somewhat tasteless and gritty. A Hostess style cupcake isn't meant to be super sweet, and my personal chocolate icing recipe does use real bittersweet chocolate, but my vanilla cream filling is really sweet and so together they strike a nice balance. In contrast, the Sage cupcake has bittersweet icing, bitter cake, and tasteless cream filling, and so together there's no sweetness to the cupcake. Blech! Overall Taste Rating: 0 out of 5 sprinkles

Texture: The cake texture is dry, not at all moist like the Sage Vanilla Cupcake, but instead very dry and maybe even a bit stale. The chocolate icing has a good texture despite the bad taste, very smooth and silky on my tongue. There is barely ANY vanilla cream filling in the middle of the cupcake, and the filling (which is also the zigzag on top) is VERY gritty. Blech! Overall Texture Rating: 2 out of 5 sprinkles

Aesthetic: Aesthetics is the only place this cupcake is going to win any major points with me. It's bigger than the traditional commercial Hostess cupcakes, with dark chocolatey colored cake and rich, glossy dark chocolate colored frosting, and a cute white zig-zag across the top, albeit sloppily applied, but the cupcake has that appealing homemade look as opposed to the from-the-box mass-produced look. The exterior appearance of this cupcake is what compelled me to buy it in the first place! Overall Aesthetic Rating: 4 out of 5 sprinkles!

Satisfaction: In addition to the fact that this cupcake didn't taste very good and had a bad texture, there was barely ANY chocolate icing on the top, although I can accept the fact that a Hostess cupcake by design only has a thin layer of icing across the top. BUT, what is unforgiveable is that there was hardly ANY cream filling inside the cupcake! And topped off by the racket price of $5.00 for this abomination of a cupcake, my satisfaction was practically negative! Overall Satisfaction Rating: 0 out of 5 sprinkles

Overall Cupcake Ranking: 6 Sprinkles (out of 20 possible)