Washington, D.C., has become a cupcake mecca filled with moist cakes, rich frostings and innovative toppings, each more creative than the last. While the cupcake trend seems to be dying out in other major cities, it is as strong as the Washington Monument in the District and doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. Lines out the door are as signature to these cupcake shops as their pastries’ frostings on top, and for good reason. Here are some of the best cupcakeries in the Washington area.

1. Baked & Wired

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Baked & Wired has gotten plenty of press in the Washington bakery scene, and it’s well deserved. The small joint down the road from Georgetown Cupcake sells baked goods, including dessert bars, biscotti, breakfast breads, coffee cakes, brownies, buttermilk biscuits, cakes, cookies, cakecups, muffins, pies and quiches. Its cupcakes, though, are the star of the show. Baked & Wired calls its cupcakes “cakecups,” and that’s exactly what they were. The cakecups are made up mostly of moist and savory cake, like a muffin, with a small, perfect amount of decadent frosting on top. The bakery’s most popular flavor is strawberry, a vanilla cake with fresh strawberries folded in the batter topped with pink buttercream. The moist cake bursts with natural sweetness from the strawberry chunks — the perfect amount to balance the sweeter strawberry frosting.

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Another one of Baked & Wired’s most popular flavors is the Elvis Impersonator: a banana cake topped with peanut butter frosting and drizzled with chocolate, sprinkled with an optional topping of candied bacon. (Why is this even optional?) The banana cake tastes like homemade banana bread taken fresh out of the oven. The peanut butter frosting is sweet, is balanced with the saltiness from the candied bacon. This cakecup is no joke. For full-on decadence, this is the choice to make. Other interesting flavors are pistachio, a pistachio spiced cake with a honey cardamom cream cheese buttercream, and the Texas Sheetcake, a chocolate cake with a hint of cinnamon topped with praline-like chocolate-pecan frosting.

Price: $3.75 each, $45 dozen

Rating: 4.5/5

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2. Red Velvet Cupcakery

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The Red Velvet Cupcakery is a cupcake heaven with unique savory and sweet flavor combinations that are specialized and use insanely creative ingredients. Red velvet and devil’s food cake are among its most popular, but the bakery has a featured flavor that rotates each week, meaning it produces 52 new flavors a year. Some of its unique options include the honey lavender cupcake and the balsamic fig variety. Toppings include caramelized pecans, caramelized violet petals and even a 24-karat gold leaf. Red Velvet Cupcakery uses many local ingredients and bakes everything fresh from scratch on site.

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The sense of locality is evident in the charmingly cozy cupcake joint, where next door, owner Tracy Wilson serves up specialty coffee in her adjoining cafe. The devil’s food cupcake is moist and hearty, a chocolate buttermilk cake topped with Valrhona bittersweet chocolate ganache and garnished with a 24-karat gold leaf. The richness of this cupcake is sure to be unmatched, until you try the Take 5 candy bar featured flavor: a cupcake filled with caramel, topped with a milk chocolate ganache and a chocolate covered pretzel. The cupcake is crunchy and salty from the pretzels but extra sweet from the caramel that oozes from the center.

Price: $3.25 each, $36 dozen

Rating: 4/5

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3. Georgetown Cupcake

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Georgetown Cupcake has become an iconic destination for cupcake lovers across the country. The line almost always stretches far out the door, as tourists are drawn in by the novelty of the cupcakes. Georgetown’s most popular flavor is red velvet, but it has 18 classic flavors, eight specials every day and three to six seasonal flavors each month. November’s seasonal flavors are caramel apple, pumpkin spice, pumpkin cheesecake, Election Red Velvet Donkey, Election Red Velvet Elephant and Thanksgiving Maple Chocolate Chip.

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The Thanksgiving Maple Chocolate Chip variety is a maple cupcake filled with Callebaut chocolate chips, and topped with a maple frosting and a fondant turkey. The chocolate chip cupcake is more of a muffin and is flavorful but not too sweet. While the frosting on top is very rich and a little overly sweet, it is extremely fluffy and definitely the creamiest frosting of all the locations. Georgetown’s frosting texture takes the win.

Price: $3.25 each, $18 half dozen, $35 dozen

Rating: 3/5

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4. Sprinkles Cupcakes

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Sprinkles Cupcakes, Ice Cream and Cookies has locations all over the country and has many flavors, such as banana peanut butter and Cuban coffee. It has a wall listing flavors, including monthly seasonal flavors and weekly specials. This month’s specials are Swirl — developed by Jessica Alba and Sprinkles founder Candace Nelson — a vanilla and chocolate marble cupcake topped with milk-chocolate cream-cheese frosting and chocolate and vanilla sprinkles, as well as the orange cranberry cupcake, an orange cake filled with cranberries and topped with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The red velvet cupcake is Sprinkles’ signature and most popular flavor, but its moist cake is its only unique feature.

 

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The chai latte cupcake consists of a cake spiced with a blend of cardamom, cloves, anise, ginger and cinnamon, topped with a sweet chai frosting. The cake is simple but not overly sweet and helped balance out the overwhelming sweetness of the frosting.

Price: $3.75 each, $42 dozen, $2 minis

Rating: 2.5/5

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