the Peanut Butter and Jelly cupcake

Last week, I briefly mentioned how I went looking for scones, and ended up with cupcakes instead. These cupcakes are from The Yellow Leaf Cupcake store in Belltown. I ate half of each cupcake in the store, then took the rest home for my husband to sample. We both agreed that the Peanut Butter and Jelly cupcake the best of the three–it was the least dry, and the texture of the cupcake itself was nice and light.

the Tomato Soup cupcake with chocolate Italian meringue

Culinary historians claim that Tomato Soup cakes (aka “Mystery Cakes”) was first mentioned in print in 1928, proving their existence pre-1928. MFK Fischer provides her own recipe for this unusual cake in her book, How to Cook a Wolf. Tomato Soup cakes exploded in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, when Campbell’s Soup published a recipe for it in their Help for the Hostess series. I read about Tomato Soup cake years ago, but never had the inclination to make one, and never saw one sold until I went to Yellow Leaf. Tomato Soup cake tastes like a very mild spice cake–at Yellow Leaf, they topped them with chocolate Italian meringue frosting, which tasted a little odd when combined with the tomato-y spice cake flavor. I suspect I’d like the cake/frosting combination more if they had used a more neutral-flavored vanilla frosting, though the cake and the frosting alone was tasty.

the Vanilla Toffee cupcake

The Vanilla Toffee cupcake is apparently popular with a lot of their regulars, so I got one of those too. The cake itself had the coarsest crumb of the three, as you can see in the photo. (Perhaps a little too much baking soda?) The Italian meringue was whipped quite stiff.

The cupcakes at Yellow Leaf aren’t particularly fancy, but they taste homemade if that’s your cupcake ideal. Perhaps the best thing about Yellow Leaf is that their generous owners donate a full $1 from each of their cupcakes sold to charity. (All their cupcakes retail for $3 each.) I applaud Yellow Leaf for donating such a large portion of their profits, and I hope Seattlites will continue to support such a kind-hearted business.