California Dessertin': Baked Beauties

This baked-good entry is entirely devoted to Kara's Cupcakes...6 particular cupcakes, to be exact. If you recall the multitude of cupcake entries written thus far in this blog, you can easily imagine my glee at stumbling upon a cupcakery in Ghirardelli Square that rivals my favorite East Coast cupcake haunts! We snacked on Kara's excellent baked treats twice in San Francisco:

• Fleur de Sel- a moist chocolate cupcake was filled with soft, sweet caramel and topped in thick, dark, creamy chocolate ganache. The ganache, in turn, was dusted with crystals of fleur de sel. I really enjoyed the bits of salt in an otherwise smooth and silkily sweet cupcake. One of the best cupcakes I have ever had!
  
• Vanilla Chocolate - a vanilla cupcake was topped with sugary chocolate buttercream frosting. This simple treat was tasty, but could have used some additional moisture.
• Meyer Lemony Lemon - a dense, somewhat dry vanilla cupcake was injected with tart lemon filling. The frosting was a smooth, barely-lemon vanilla buttercream whose potential citrusy tartness was negated by its creaminess. Fortunately the tart filling more than made up for the lack of lemon flavor elsewhere in the dessert.
  
• Passion Fruit - the same vanilla cupcake had intensely sweet...yet tart...passion fruit filling within, and vanilla buttercream frosting on top. The filling provided the moisture necessary for the cake, and the passion fruit flavor's strength stood out against the cake and frosting's comparatively mild vanilla.

Four cupcakes, however, apparently were not enough! We were surprised to see a second Kara's outpost a few days later in downtown Napa.

• Raspberry Dazzle - the same moist chocolate cake used in the Fleur de Sel cupcake was filled with sweet raspberry preserves and topped with smooth raspberry buttercream frosting. Here, the frosting's creaminess worked well with its fruit flavor, as berries are more easily made sweet than citrus fruits. This cupcake dazzled me, for sure.
  
• Banana Caramel - a banana cupcake, whose texture walked the line between banana bread and cake proper, was filled with sweet caramel and topped with cream cheese frosting. The frosting was reminiscent of carrot cake topping, but silkier; the caramel was smooth against the comparative roughness of the cake. These three flavors went unexpectly well together, and made this cupcake the most (pleasantly) surprising.

Overall, Kara's cakes were better than the average Boston cup cake, with frosting to rival Sweet's. If you travel to the San Francisco area and need a delightful dessert to go, make a stop - or two - or even three! - at Kara's.