Kara’s Cupcakes Palo Alto — Restaurant in Palo Alto

Kara's cupcakes is a boutique bakery that offers cupcakes and cakes that are baked with nuts and nut products. It is not a nut free bakery. They can accommodate different dietary restrictions. They offer gluten-free and vegan cupcakes as well. One thing to note is that their vegan cupcakes are not gluten-free, and their gluten-free cupcakes are not vegan. You can find all their cupcake flavors in regular size and mini size.

The store was pretty empty when we went there, and they had run out of some of the flavors in the mini size. I tried 4 different mini cupcakes - 2 fruity flavors and 2 non fruity. The 2 fruity flavors I got were banana and passion fruit. I couldn't taste the passion fruit at all, and the banana one had a hint of banana flavor. The cupcakes had a dry texture, and they weren't moist at all. The icing on top was liquidy and oily.

The 2 non fruity flavors that I tried were red velvet and fluer de sel. Fleur de sel was probably the best of all despite it being only decent. The cupcakes were a bit pricy for their taste.

The person at the counter was also not the most helpful person. They were out of a lot of flavors, but instead of notifying us about that, she waited for us to pick our flavors first. We had 4 - 5 rounds of back and forth before we finalized all the flavors because every time we picked a flavor, she informed us that they didn't have that in stock anymore. A lot of time and energy could have been saved had she notified us at the beginning about the flavors that aren't available.

Kara's cupcakes is located in a busy strip mall, so parking can be a bit tricky. Please be aware of those 20-30 minute parking spots if you dont want to get ticketed for parking over the alloted time limit. The store is pretty empty inside and appears to be set up for mostly...

UPDATE JUNE 2021: I am subtracting two stars from my review because of a couple of things. One is, their selection is almost nil after 5 p.m. so if you're stopping to get dessert on the way home from work, most likely you won't find much of an assortment or even quantity. We also noticed that they are definitely skimping on the amount of frosting that the cupcakes should and used to have.

The other bigger problem and more annoying is that they now won't accept cash. I hope they're not going to use Coronavirus as an excuse because they need to update their research on Coronavirus and the chances of catching the virus from paper. I walked in today with a $20 bill and then had to walk across the shopping center to my car to get a card I didn't want to use but had to because I promised to bring Kara's home for dessert. Otherwise, I would have just left the cupcakes there.

We will still buy their cupcakes for special occasions. We prefer buttercream and they have a few excellent choices with buttercream frosting. They have top-notch ingredients and I've never had anybody put one down and leave it. Palo Alto location...

The reason behind the one star (though it should have been zero stars really):

We ordered our son's birthday cake from Kara's Palo Alto and designed the cake and submitted the deposit and all paperwork a month in advance. We talked to Ashley and emailed back and forth three times and placed the order in person. We arrived on the due date to pick up the order only to find that Ashley had misfiled our paper and there was no cake. The party was in an hour and I had no cake for my four year old son. On top of that Ashley just shrugged and went inside without even a proper apology or solution to the problem she had created. I was clearly very upset but not a single person from Kara's bothered to reach out to us. Nor did they refund the deposit. Clearly for them it was just another order that they had messed up. Very disappointed that such poor quality service still manages to survive in...