The Sweet Shoppe of the South — Restaurant in Blue Ridge

I am not easily impressed by cake as I am a baker myself which makes me very picky about my desserts. I'm very well aware of the amount of time and effort that goes into each baked item, so when I find a bakery that blows my mind they definitely have my attention, and I will go great lengths to satisfy cravings, especially for items that I do not personally bake myself.

If you're a baking aficionado like me, you will understand and appreciate the difficulty in making a perfectly balanced chocolate cake. But if you're no baking expert, I'll let you in on a secret: cocoa powder is a drying ingredient that often ruins the texture of a cake, rendering the cake dry and crumbly.. Cocoa powder is necessary to baking chocolate cake, but must be used wisely and balanced out perfectly to achieve a moist, fluffy texture. This has been perfectly demonstrated at The Sweet Shoppe.

I stumbled on The Sweet Shoppe last week out of total coincidence. I mentioned before that I am baker myself and when I'm out and about I'm always excited to try products to other bakeries. My first order was their chocolate lava cupcake and it completely blew my mind. I was amazed at how moist and delicious this cupcake was. I immediately complimented one of the ladies at the shop. The week following I wanted to have these cupcakes as my birthday dessert and ordered their Vanilla Caramel cupcake and their award winning S'mores cupcake--both were out of this world, crazy good. I was even shocked by how deliciously moist the vanilla caramel cupcake was. We will definitely be back and be ordering...

My husband and I stopped in this weekend for coffee and cupcakes. Although what we received was in fact excellent, we were disappointed in how we were treated by the staff working behind the counter. After accidentally putting a hole in my plastic coffee cup while mixing in some sugar etc., the cup proceeded to empty on the floor and in the trash about half way. They were super busy with a local festival going on, so after cleaning up my own mess I requested that they just make me a new cup of coffee after I profusely apologized for accidentally ruining the cup they'd just made. I wasn't really given much of any response by the 2 girls behind the counter but it was clear they felt like I was inconveniencing them and being a nuisance. (I probably apologized about 3 times and was literally never acknowledged or given any semblance of a response.) This struck me as so much more than rude, I still just can't believe it. I was scathing after leaving.

I never normally leave reviews about negative experiences, but after considering this experience for the past 3 days, I felt like this was necessary. Hopefully just an 'off day' for this place. We'll reluctantly give it another shot...

The shop is very professional with a warm welcoming atmosphere on a very quaint Main Street strip in town. We had two of the cupcakes which were both fantastic. The cake is moist and only lightly flavored. The flavor is all in the frosting and toppings but they knock those out of the park on texture and flavor! Very expensive for the size but you can tell you are paying for true expertise. The cinnamon roll was very disappointing though. The dough was surprisingly dense and chewy but not bad. The frosting was really more of a thick glaze and worked but essentially had no flavor other "very sweet". The real problem was that there was no cinnamon taste at all. I honestly thought someone had simply forgotten to add any cinnamon in this batch...until I saw a very tiny scattering of cinnamon in a few of the layers so this must be what they intended to serve. It was pleasant and I did eat the whole thing. It was really more of a sweet breakfast pastry that happened to be in a rolled shape. Absolutely could not be called a cinnamon roll and I wouldn't take another one for free. Two hits and a miss so we will have to be back to try some of their other amazing...