Steph Q.
Yelp
Sugar Bakery has a selection of four gluten free cupcakes (not vegan) and three vegan cupcakes (not GF), and I was curious to check them out because of Cupcake Wars hype. To answer Brad L's question they are not both, so apologies if you're a vegan with celiac, you won't find baked goods here. Try Katalina's in New Haven.
There is parking in the back lot on a dead end street, because parking on Main Street is kind of a nightmare. Staff is very friendly, answer all your questions and they have appropriate COVID-19 distancing measures in place.
I bought three vegan cupcakes, the vanilla, Oreo and black and white (chocolate with vanilla buttercream). Presentation was beautiful, as to be expected. The vanilla tasted the most like regular birthday cake. I don't know what they used for the buttercream, it was slightly waxy but extremely airy. The cake itself was sweet but the buttercream didn't over power it. The cake also was slightly denser but it was not dry, so that was appreciated. This was my favorite.
The Oreo cupcake was weird, the cake itself was not very sweet, with a slightly bitter aftertaste and there was no contrast with the crumbs. It felt more like crumbled chocolate cake vs. cookie, which was disappointing because I like crumbs in Oreo cupcake, but that's a preference.
I tasted a hint of black pepper in the batter of the chocolate cakes that wasn't there with the vanilla. I thought at first the cake got contaminated by a knife, even though I washed it throughly beforehand, but the black and white also had the same hint of cracked black pepper/grains of paradise. It was definitely inventive, but if it's not your jam I would stick with vanilla.
I strongly suspect that these too are also VCTOW-derived cupcakes.
TBH, the real winner of vegan cupcakes is Isa Chandra Moskowitz, so it was nice to see Sugar's spin on those very familiar to me recipes.
I was told the GF cupcakes were good.
They were fine. If I didn't want to bake cupcakes and really craved one I would go to Sugar, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get some. I would probably just order a cake from here. They are not doing special orders though, so whatever is on the website is what you get.