There’s a debate rag­ing through­out the Los Ange­les food crowd. No not which Kogi truck is the best but who makes the best Red Vel­vet cup­cake? The trendy choice is Sprin­kles in Bev­erly Hills. But that’s so unin­spired. True cup­cake afi­ciona­dos say that the over rated Sprin­kles is for the unin­formed masses who just like to fol­low trends. They wait hours in line like lem­mings for a $4 cup­cake com­pletely unaware there are other places in LA that make Red Vel­vet so much bet­ter. …really now? I’m not a lem­ming and I’m going to have to decide for myself. So this past week­end, I decided do an in depth taste test and try all three cup­cakes back to back to back. Still on a sugar high, I’m writ­ing to report back to you all that Sprin­kles indeed does not make the best Red Vel­vet cupcake.

Red Vel­vet became pop­u­lar dur­ing World War II when there was a sugar short­age. Sugar was being reserved for our troops and inven­tive bak­ers look­ing for an alter­na­tive sweet­ener for their choco­late cakes stum­bled upon an old south­ern recipe called The Choco­late Cake of the South that used beets for sweet­en­ing. An unin­ten­tional side effect was that the cakes turned red. Nowa­days, the beets have been removed and replaced with red food col­or­ing. Also, the sugar and cocoa pow­der has returned for a more tra­di­tional choco­late cake.  Renamed Red Vel­vet, the south­ern recipe has become so pop­u­lar that even Jes­sica Simp­son had it as her wed­ding cake. But we all know how that mar­riage turned out.

Bas­tard stepchild of real cake and cousin to the muf­fin, cup­cakes in my opin­ion are the ideal size. When done right, you get the right ratio of moist cake mid­dle, firm cupcake-top, and frost­ing in each bite. And there in a nut­shell was my judg­ing cri­te­rion. In addi­tion to look­ing for a great cream cheese frost­ing, I had every­thing I needed to get all Iron Chef on the fol­low­ing three bak­eries: Sprin­kles, Dots, and Aun­tie Em’s Kitchen.

Sprin­kles $3.25

Sprin­kles Red Velvet

Now, I’ve never actu­ally been to Sprin­kles. Two hours seems like a long wait for a cup­cake. For­tu­nately, I have a friend that works there. She brings over dozens of cup­cakes for free when­ever I have a house party. But in an attempt to get the whole expe­ri­ence, I decided to go and brave the line just like every­one else. The wait was about 45 min­utes and every­one in line was friendly. There was a good mix of reg­u­lars and tourists tak­ing pic­tures, “Look Ma! I went to Sprin­kle!” Now even though I didn’t think Sprin­kles had the best cup­cake, what they did get right was their frost­ing to cake ratio. The other two cup­cake pur­vey­ors either had way too much frost­ing or way too lit­tle. But although they had just the right amount of frost­ing, it was by far the sweet­est of the three and in my opin­ion way too sweet. Sprin­kles also uses a lot of pow­dered sugar which ends up giv­ing the frost­ing a gran­u­lar mouth feel. But my biggest quib­ble is that their frost­ing doesn’t have the nice tang that I look for in a cream cheese frost­ing. I also had a minor gripe about the cake itself because it was a lit­tle doughy. But this wasn’t that notice­able when eaten with the frosting.

Dots $2.75

Dots Red Velvet

Dots runs their busi­ness out of a small lit­tle store in Pasadena and had almost sold out for the day. Although still damn good, Dots was unfor­tu­nately the worst of the three. The cake was way too doughy and their ane­mic amount of frost­ing was not able to hide it. As for their frost­ing, it was too sweet and not cream cheesy enough for my taste.  But even though not my favorite, they can’t be doing that bad because they opened up a new loca­tion in Old Town Pasadena.

And the win­ner is:

Aun­tie Em’s Kitchen $3.50

Aun­tie Em’s Red Velvet

Although Aun­tie Em’s had way too much frost­ing on their cake, the tart­ness was refresh­ing. The cake was moist and sup­ple and by far the best. It had a nice springy tex­ture that popped back up after tak­ing a bite. And if you didn’t force your­self to fin­ish all the frost­ing, you had the per­fect Red Vel­vet cup­cake. They were also the only one to get inven­tive by adding a touch of coconut sprin­kles around the edge. Aun­tie Em’s has the feel of a casual neigh­bor­hood restau­rant and I ended up eat­ing brunch there. They have free help your­self, all-you-can-drink cof­fee and a great selec­tion of omelets. You can’t go wrong with this place and of the three, this is prob­a­bly the only place that I will go back to.

So there you go. Try them for your­selves and let me know what you think.