Crème — Restaurant in Des Moines

Order: Double chocolate cupcake, cappuccino Price: $12 Pros: If you like cupcakes they were pretty good, they had a wine pairing suggestions with most of the cupcakes Cons: Terrible coffee (as in couldn’t even finish it), overpriced for just cupcakes in my opinion

Thoughts: Let me start off by saying that I’m not a huge cupcake fan, but Des Moines didn’t seem to have a large desert presence other than this so my buddy and I decided to give it a shot. Seeing as I’d been without decent coffee for coming up on three days now I settled on a standard “double chocolate” cupcake and cappuccino. I had assumed that they would be a bit on the pricy side given the “as seen on cupcake wars” sign on the door but it was still a bit of a shock. I mean their just mini cakes, but the price makes me think they should be a top end bakery.

The servers seemed nice enough but a little on the snooty side. That, along with all the wine pairing options they suggested for the cupcakes almost gave it the feel of a ritzy, high end club…except they only serve cupcakes and wine.

Once the items made it to the table, I took a sip of cappuccino…and immediately set it aside. Unfortunately my quest for a decent cup of coffee would continue and this was just below Starbucks on the quality scale. The chocolate cupcake was good, honestly, but seeing as I’m not the biggest cupcake fan it was pretty hard for me to enjoy this place.

While there was nothing really “wrong” with the cupcake itself, it really couldn’t offset all the other negatives I found about the place. If you’re a high-end wine and cupcake person (is that a thing?) then you should probably give this place a try; but if you’re not, you may want to seek your fill of...

This was my first time I had visited this place. I wanted to get a few cupcakes to go for my husband. I went on a Wednesday evening after work and knew that there would probably be a crowd. I got there and stood in line, there was just one person in front of me getting cupcakes to eat there. There were just two employees working at the time. There was a jewelry party going on as well, so there were quite a few people there. The person in front of me received their cupcake and then it was my turn. I stood there for 10 minutes while the girl behind the counter waited on the jewelry party people. This group had drink tickets and kept coming up to the counter, while I was in line, and cutting in front of me to get more drinks. While this was not the employee's fault that these women kept cutting in line, she did keep waiting on them! Just as I was about to turn around and walk out, the employee told me she would be right with me. So I waited a bit longer. While I was waiting I noticed one of the cupcakes had a hair coming out of the frosting. When the employee finally got to me I mentioned the hair to her. She said: "I noticed that about 2 hours ago, I was hoping no one would notice." What!!?? She did throw the cupcake away, but What??!! Was she planning on selling it? I got my cupcakes and left. Later that evening we went to eat the cupcakes, I had the chocolate covered strawberry and my husband had the red velvet. They were chewy and tasted as if the oil that was used had gone rancid. The only redeeming thing about the cupcakes was the frosting. Probably won't...

Gross. I really, wanted this place to work out. I had anticipated ordering these cupcakes for my graduation party but after buying a box of four I can't say that I'd even give them as a gift. Firstly, the reason I give 2 stars is because the cupcakes were decorated very beautifully, and easy to distinguish between the different flavors. I got there new mango flavor, peanutbutter, blueberry lemon, and vanilla vanilla. All of them except the mango and the peanut butter one were so sweet I couldn't eat 1/4 of the cupcake before needing a glass of water. The sweetness actually made my tongue hurt. The flavors were imbalanced. The blueberry lemon one had lemon frosting that was like eating solidified lemonade that someone forgot to ad sugar too. The peanutbutter one was chocolate cake that tastes like cardboard with hot cocoa powder on it. And the frosting was so bland I wouldn't finish it. I asked my friend to try the mango because I was confused by the flavor and he said it tastes like fish! But we both agreed the coconut frosting ontop was good. I've been baking all my life and never had cupcakes like this. I think that they slack on quality for them to look pretty. Great displays....