It’s become a tradition that almost any time my mom visits me at school, we head to Princeton’s House of Cupcakes. This is because we’re both slightly obsessed with their delicious cupcakes that come in a variety of flavors.
For this reason, I could not be more excited to learn recently that there’s a cupcake shop much closer to campus — located right here in Ewing.
Nestled inside Arctic Ice Cream at 22 Arctic Parkway, Let Them Eat Cake is a boutique bake shop that sells cupcakes, cakes, brownies, cookies, macaroons and more.
Some of the cupcakes are available every day — including red velvet, vanilla chocolate and chocolate chocolate — while others are seasonal, such as pumpkin spice. Other options include s’mores, carrot cake, almond joy and chocolate hazelnut.
The bake shop was opened by Joanne Canady-Brown and Danielle Janelli, a pair of friends from the Hoboken area.
The two were roommates in college and had been managers at the same restaurant, according to Janelli. Canady-Brown then moved to Ewing after she got married.
“We just found ourselves both unemployed at the same time and we’re like, you know what, there’s nothing down here and we both need a job. So we made our own,” Janelli recalled.
Let Them Eat Cake had their “grand opening” at last year’s Community Fest, selling cupcakes in the snow, Janelli said. This led to a few catering jobs and then in June they opened up at their current location when the space became available.
Though my friends and I had trouble finding Let Them Eat Cake at first and initially drove past it, once we were inside, we foudn that it was such an adorable little shop with so many delicious-looking desserts.
Since I went toward the end of the day, there were not as many options as usual, but I bought a dozen to share with my friends.
Some of the flavors were red velvet, pumpkin spice, carrot cake, chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, vanilla cake with chocolate frosting and Guiness Stout — a chocolate cupcake.
Another great part was that I happened to go on Election Day — so there were cupcakes with the Republican elephant and others that said “Vote Obama.” (They were patriotic — and delicious!)
Upon returning from the bake shop, I cut chunks from each of the flavors for my friends and me to try. We all had different opinions when it came to favorites.
Aside from the classic vanilla cake with chocolate frosting (which had tasty, rich chocolate frosting with sprinkles), the pumpkin spice was definitely my favorite. It had cream cheese buttercream frosting and the perfect amount of pumpkin.
The red velvet was one of my friend’s favorite flavors — and I agree it was good. Meanwhile, my other friend enjoyed the chocolate with vanilla frosting the most.
My conclusion is that you can’t really go wrong with any of these flavors. I definitely plan to return when they have the s’mores and banana foster flavors. The Oreo cupcake sounds delicious as well — the description says there’s an Oreo baked right inside.
The only slight downside is that the cupcakes are pricey if you plan to buy multiple. They’re $2.50 a piece, with a dozen costing $27. They definitely taste and look worth it, but some other shops offer deals where if you buy 10, you get two free.
Also, another bummer is that they’re not open on Mondays and have shortened hours on Sundays. But this is only problematic because it means I can’t go more often.
