The best feature of the Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcake from Sprinkles is likely its sweet chocolate frosting.
Rivalries between the East Coast and the West Coast are as varied as they are numerous. Basketball, rap music, fashion and art all have their champions on both coasts, and this week I did some research on the cupcake rivalry that plays out on Santa Monica Boulevard every day: L.A.-based Sprinkles versus Manhattan-based Crumbs.
This week I took the Metro Line 20 and got off on Wilshire and Linden. The surrounding Beverly Hills area is full of high-end shops, but also small shops, including bakeries such as Sprinkles and Crumbs that attract their own visitors.
The shops have locations within two blocks of each other and have similar backgrounds. Both were founded in the early 2000s by a husband-and-wife pair in an upscale neighborhood. Both serve a mixture of traditional cupcakes ““ red velvet and vanilla ““ and creative combinations of flavors and toppings you’d only find in a gourmet shop.
At the same time, there’s a reason the stores manage to co-exist so close to one another.
Unlike Crumbs, Sprinkles has a very minimalist style that’s evident in everything about it. The storefront is plain and brown except for the hot pink script “Sprinkles” in the top right corner. The interior is sleek and simple.
The menu takes up most of the wall behind the counter and wall to the right has shelves full of Sprinkles T-shirts and cake mixes available for purchase.
The shop is so small only about eight people can fit inside, which means the line to get in goes outside and down the street for a while.
The cupcakes are as neat and simple as the shop. The frosting and decoration doesn’t get much more complicated than sprinkles or decorative stars and dots. There’s one cupcake size (average) that comes in about 24 flavors, including the occasional limited-time offer.
In honor of the Academy Awards held on Sunday, Sprinkles put white frosting and a gold star on their Red Velvet and called it a Red Carpet.
The Sprinkles website describes the cupcake as a “southern style light chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting.” All the elements seem to come together ““ you can taste the chocolate, but it’s not overpowering, the frosting tastes good without being too sweet and the cake is moist.
I was less impressed with the Peanut Butter Chocolate, though that may be a personal preference. Whereas the Red Velvet cake could stand on its own without the frosting, the Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcake’s best component is the frosting, a milk-chocolate cream cheese.
Having tried one great cupcake and one good one at Sprinkles, I made my way down to the significantly less crowded Crumbs bake shop.
If Sprinkles is sleek, Crumbs is vibrant and playful. Some of the cupcakes look like refined versions of what one’s younger brother might design.
There are lime-green cupcakes with a pink sugar coating (the Cosmo), cupcakes with graham crackers in them (S’Mores) and cupcakes covered with M&M-type candies (Candy).
There are also pastries, muffins, cookies and monstrous Colossal sized cupcakes that are the size of a toddler’s head.
The Blackbottom Cheesecake Brownie has guilty pleasure all over it. Larger than a normal cupcake, it’s a brownie cake with a cheesecake center, with a vanilla cream cheese spread topped with brownie bits and a drizzle of vanilla cream cheese.
Though it’s almost too sweet, it tastes great and the center is soft and creamy.
Both places take different approaches to the same concept ““ extraordinary cupcakes ““ but who does it better?
Crumbs cupcakes are more exciting, but Sprinkles gets things right where Crumbs goes overboard.
Even the shops’ visitors don’t seem to have much of a preference. Jennifer Braun, 38, from Winnipeg, Canada, went to Crumbs because she’d visited the Manhattan location and enjoyed them.
The real deciding factor, however, was the line of 40-something people at Sprinkles.
Erin Wilson, 23, was with her mother and sister, who were visiting from Iowa, and took them to Sprinkles because it has a great selection of flavors and uses the right amount of frosting. It’s the place where she and her friends go, though she doesn’t have a concrete reason for why it is her favorite.
Similarly, I can’t say that I preferred one cupcake shop over the other. In the end, it’s like comparing apples and oranges ““ Sprinkles’ simplicity cannot be rated above or below Crumbs’ extravagance.
If there’s a rivalry at all (and I didn’t just imagine it), then there’s no clear winner.
If you want to weigh in on the cupcake “debate,” e-mail John at “¨ajohn@media.ucla.edu.
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