Iron Cupcake Toronto

I'm not a huge fan of cupcakes but one of my closest friends, Stephanie, is. (In fact, there's a crazy personalized NYC cupcake tour posting that still needs to be written...) So when I heard the Liberty Village cupcake shop, For the Love of Cake, was hosting Toronto's first Iron Cupcake competition, and that the secret ingredient was going to be beer in honour of St. Patrick's Day, I decided we should go.

It was chaotic and packed but we somehow wound up relatively close to the front of the line when they started handing out the mini cupcakes. This is how it worked:

• Each person had a ticket with 4 of 16 numbers on it, and so you were judging four of sixteen cupcakes.
• The other side of your ticket listed all 16 numbers, and you judged visually who you thought had the most aesthetically pleasing cupcake display, aligned with the St. Patty's Day theme of green.

Cover was $5, and it included the four mini cupcakes plus tea was being given out for free. I felt a little jipped because apparently No. 4 had some sort of accident. My friend heard "baking accident"; I heard car. I hope it wasn't car.

The one in the upper left-hand corner was No. 15 and the ultimate judges' winner. It was also the one Steph chose as her favourite -- I think mainly because the cream cheese topping really pushed that particular cupcake to a higher state of deliciousness. The one in the upper right-hand corner, No. 16, was People's Choice and had my favourite visual presentation.

The baker called it "Morning After St. Patty's Day." As you can see, there are little Guinness "cans" spread around the bed and even a mini Advil box on the nightstand. Now that is some serious creativity and theme dedication.

We also liked this cheese spread one, though it's difficult to make out the cupcake in this shot. (It's underneath the pretzel sticks.)

For the most part, all the cupcakes we sampled were very good. It was funny to sit on a floor, at a little table, swapping these mini baked goods and trying to debate the finer points of why one may be better than the other. Except for one of Steph's cupcakes, I couldn't really taste the beer component in any of them. But I think it would be fun to experiment next time I whip up my own batch.