Today I went outside for the first time since arriving at my parents’ home after my surgery. (The only other being outside I have done in a week is to be transported from the hospital to my parents’.) The purpose of doing this was mostly to get me to eat real food and to get some fresh air. As a result my gums are very sore from all this ‘chewing’ business, and so is my jaw, but that is not the point: where I’m going with this is, down the road from my favorite restaurant in my parents’ area — they are in a small town just outside NYC, now — a new bakery had opened up.
It is a very pink little cupcake place. Now, anyone in the Capital District of New York is familiar, at this point, I’m sure, with Bettie’s Cakes. And I will be honest here: I don’t actually like Bettie’s Cakes. Not just because despite my girly-girlness I’m not enamored with pink, but because I don’t actually like their cupcakes. They are overcomplicated and showy. They look like things to be photographed, yes, but not things to be eaten. The taste never grabbed me, either. There was just a lot I didn’t like about it, though as a cupcake lover I sure loved the concept.
So when my father and I encountered Sweet & Social, we figured: another cupcake place. He hadn’t liked any of the ones in his area, either. But we bit the bullet and decided to try it anyway, because while all cupcake places seem to be going the way of pink décor, Sweet & Social had certainly done it best, at least from the window.
And when we went in, we were surprised. Surprised by not just how great the aesthete of the place was, but by how amazing the cupcakes were. They were just right for us: simple, straightforward kinds of sweets like yellow cake with fudge icing, chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting, lemon bars — nothing pretentious at all. Just cupcakes. Really, really good cupcakes. There is not an ounce of pretension in this place: it’s great.
Since I am not a reviewer and this is not a review, there aren’t any more details for me to go in besides that if you’re in the area I wholly recommend the chocolate-with-vanilla-frosting mini cupcakes. My father tried a whole variety, along with the lemon bars.
And now for what we’ve all been waiting for: the rest of the pictures. (Sadly, they were taken with a low-pixel-count cell phone camera, as are, at least temporarily, all of my pictures. There is a DSLR in my future.)
An extremely poor shot of the flowers in the window — from inside. Unfortunately, all of my photos are from inside.
The wall adjacent to the door — along with the customer I later apologized to.
If those pictures were bad, though, this one is atrocious. The cupcakes in the picture? Quite the opposite.
The very, very classy wall text. I love wall text. And as a typography nerd, I can say this is some really excellent wall text.
And lastly, we have — the cupcake bar. In case you wanted to sit a little while.
Sadly, we were in a hurry, so I didn’t have a time to determine the relative comfort of the seats at the little bar. But by the time we were finished ordering, other people were sitting in them — meaning they must at least be okay!
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