VanillaCupCake-064Vanilla cupcakes are back at Starbucks! They arrived back in the stores on December 26, 2009.  They’re not the same as last year’s cupcake though. There aren’t as many sprinkles, and the frosting is not as sweet as before. The cake part of the cupcake is not as moist. It definitely is a step down from what was knock-your-socks-off quality cupcakes for the past two years running.  I wish I had a picture of the previous version of the cupcakes, but alas, since I was not blogging back then, I didn’t think to take a picture.

The new cupcakes have caused enough discontent that there is even a mystarbucksidea.com thread about them:

Despite that this is a small step down from last year’s cupcake, it’s still highly edible and I will be eating more than one of them! I just cannot resist vanilla cupcakes!

When I had my first vanilla cupcake this year, I tweeted about it and got like five replies which seemed like a lot to me!  This told me that I am not the only person who craves vanilla cupcakes, and so now it’s an actual blog post, as silly as it may be.  The cupcakes, in my humble opinion, have gone from an A++ to about a B, which still definitely a fine treat.

I was google-ing partly to find an image of the old cupcake and I found this:

http://www.wham2007.com/cupcakes/index.html

^ Someone has created a webpage just to rave about the ‘old version’ of the Vanilla cupcake.  There is an image of the old cupcake on there too, which I have borrowed from them…hopefully they won’t be upset:2008VersionVanillaCupcake

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On another random note, I recently tried these lightly toffee-cinnamon sweetened almonds and thought they were delicious! Sometimes the packaged food on the shelves at Starbucks has hidden treasures but customers never know it because there rarely is any sampling of them.  It’s hard to tempt people to buy almonds when they have no idea what they’re really getting.  I didn’t buy them until they went on sale.  You can still find them now at your local Starbucks – on sale for $3.99 I think, but I assume they’ll be gone soon. They are great…here are the almonds:

CinnamonToffeeAlmonds-067