Daisy Cakes

 At the higher end of the mobile food craze sits Daisy Cakes, its shiny, retro Airstream trailer a stark contrast to the cumbersome trucks of other mobile vendors. 

Yet Daisy Cakes’ cupcakes more than live up to the trailer’s aesthetic, its polished presentation complemented by delectable twists on classic flavors. In general, Daisy Cakes’ appeal comes from the fact that the treats manage to hit an ideal cake-to-frosting ratio, with the cake just dense enough to balance the light yet ultra-sweet icing. The dough is moist and flavorful without being overwrought, hinting at the homemade while justifying its gourmet price tag. 

The red velvet was a standout, the dark cocoa-laced base interacting nicely with a well-executed, slightly savory cream cheese icing. The black and white, a Valrhona chocolate cupcake crowned with vanilla frosting, was similarly tempting. Vanilla frosting is often hit-or-miss, the less-complex flavor an optimal excuse for either too much sugar or too little flavor. But Daisy Cakes’ vanilla icing was a welcome deviation from this norm, offering a pleasantly sweet yet well-rounded vanilla counterpart to the cake’s rich chocolate flavor.

And let’s not forget the cupcake-of-the-week. A recent offering was a maple cupcake sprinkled with candied bacon, playing into the vendor’s gourmet take on mobile food.

Where Daisy Cakes disappoints is in its chocolate-on-chocolate and vanilla-on-vanilla offerings. Both were monochromatic and almost painfully sweet, lacking the other varieties’ winning interplay of variant flavor notes.