Starbucks Petite Desserts

www.starbucks.com

After a rough day at the office, I decided to stop at Starbucks for one of my favorite coffee treats – an iced peppermint mocha. As I was waiting on line, I noticed their petite desserts. I decided to try the red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting and dark chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting to see what they taste like.

I’ve read several articles about Starbucks baking petite desserts, which are all supposed to be less than 200 calories. I figured I had nothing lose with such a small calorie count.  After all, chocolate makes everything better.

Biting into the cupcakes, I was a little disappointed. Both cupcakes were dry and tasted more like a dark chocolate and red velvet muffin respectively. The frosting on both cupcakes was good, but also tasted a little dried out. The quarter of a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup on top of the frosting was my favorite part of eating the cupcakes.

Two causes of dried out cupcakes are over baking and improper storage. I feel that if more attention was paid to the ingredients put into the cupcake and the cupcakes were stored properly, they would taste a lot better. Properly stored cupcakes should be in airtight containers, not sitting in a display cabinet and then served to customers. They should also not be refrigerated since this can also dry out the cupcakes.

www.starbucks.com

After my experience with the cupcakes, I am a little hesitant to try the Birthday Cake Pops, Sweet Squares and Red Velvet Whoopie Pie. Buying a single dessert is on the expensive side and I’m not sure it’s worth the money to try the other petite desserts. I would love to hear your opinions of the petite desserts, so please feel free to leave a comment.

As a side note, I cannot speak for Starbucks about what the baking process is or how the cupcakes stored. This is based on my personal opinion and my knowledge of cupcake baking based on my personal experiences.