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Taste tester #3: Valerie.

Qualifications: Valerie is the creative genius behind a much lauded remodel of the traditional food pyramid. Her innovative approach favors beer as the primary starch/grain, and incorporates cookies and pie instead of fruits and vegetables (regardless of whether the pies have fruit in them). She attributes her willingness, nay, her desperation, to seek out tasty exotic foods to her boil-it-till-it’s-dead Scottish ancestry (which may also explain her penchant for ale).

Cupcake challenger #3: Lucky Devils in Hollywood, like Auntie Em’s Kitchen, isn’t just a bakery but a restaurant as well. Valerie said of her Lucky Devils buying experience: “Called ahead and the girl was shocked that I also wanted to hear the full microbrew list, but my cupcake order was ready to pick up when I arrived.” About the display case: “Tidy and crumb-free, not overflowing with goods though.” Of her overall buying experience: “Sunday is just a great day to buy cupcakes, and I got there before the lunch rush, so the place was 50-60% full.” Regarding the location and parking for the store: “Shitty parking scenario but biking distance from my house. Nice that it’s in the heart of Hollywood.” Cupcakes: $3 each.

Taste tester comments:

• Red Velvet Cupcake: This was confusing. Since the wild card cupcake from Lucky Devils was beet we somehow got it confused with the red velvet one. I swore that the red cupcake and not the orange one was the red velvet but we still weren’t sure by taste. I think we were confused by the decorations: one came with red sprinkles while the other was topped with a red hot candy, and both had white frosting. Even reading everyone’s evaluation sheets, I’m not sure which cupcake they’re criticizing. But on the “beet, no red velvet” sheet, some comments include: “Kinda dry but tastes nothing like beet”; “dry, not very flavorful”; “tastes like zucchini bread, vegetable”! Um, yeah. What I do remember about it is that it had ultra-white, ultra-sugary, stiff frosting which was hard as if it was a day old. But done up in a pretty pattern. Suffice it to say, this wasn’t the best red velvet cupcake of the bunch.

• Chocolate Cupcake: We all agreed, these were really pretty cupcakes with pretty piping for the frosting, which had the perfect texture even though it was a bit melty from the warm day. And we enjoyed the rich, moist chocolatey flavor of the cupcake itself. Everyone rated these pretty high.

• Wild Card — Beet Cupcake: Beet was the most exotic of the wild card flavors brought in so it got points for its unusualness. When we “figured” out we were tasting beet and not red velvet it all made sense why the “red velvet” looked like it did. Comments about the “red velvet, no beet” cupcake: “Very moist, doesn’t need frosting”; “very sweet, no real flavor”; “tastes like a muffin — moist”; “weird brown/orange color”; and “different, a bit like zucchini bread, tasty.” Although the frosting and decoration were attractive, we weren’t fans of the frosting flavor as it didn’t contribute to the cupcake flavor as a whole and seemed more like icing. Scoring for beet was all over the board from “poor” to “pretty good.”

Lucky Devils
6613 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, California 90025
(323) 465-8259

Click here for the final results.