Austin, Texas – Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop

Restaurant: Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop
Cuisine: Desserts/Bakery/Cupcakes
Last visited: July 20, 2010
Location: South Congress – SoCo (South Austin)
Address: 1905 S 1st St
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 4
Service: n/a
Ambiance: 3.5
Overall: 4
Additional comments:

• Local, family owned
• Local favourite
• Baked daily from scratch
• Fresh
• Creative cupcake flavours
• No preservatives, mixes, or shortenings
• Pies/cookies/bars/cakes available
• Selection of Vegan cupcakes available
• Great for parties/weddings
• Pupcakes available (cupcakes for dogs)
• Buy 11 cupcakes get 1 FREE!
• Eco-friendly bakery boxes
• Baking classes on occasion
• Tue-Sat 12-8pm, Sun 12-4pm
• Closed Monday

**Recommendations: Black and Tan, Elvis, Pineapple Upside Up, Banana Pudding, Champion Carrot Cake

Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop is a small local and family owned bakery in Austin, Texas. It’s a husband and wife operation and they focus mainly on cupcakes, however they do offer pies, cookies, bars, and whole cakes as well. Everything is baked daily from scratch with no preservatives, mixes, or shortenings so the ingredients are fresh and made the old-fashioned way.

My cousin ordered cupcakes from Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop for her wedding so that’s how I was introduced to this little bakery. The cupcake stands and tiers are my cousins, but Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop will do a nice spread. I got to meet the owner Olivia during the cake consultation and you can tell she’s very passionate about her products, which is great!

Besides everything being homemade, what I liked most was their creativity is cupcake flavours. Sugar Mama’s offers standard daily flavours like vanilla, chocolate, lemon, Red Velvet and carrot and also a wide variety of unique flavours that appear on certain days of the week. They even have cute names to match. Click here for weekly rotating flavours.

Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop reminded me of Frostings Cupcakery in Langely, BC which also won People’s Choice for Vancouver’s Best Cupcake as well as Official Judge’s Choice for Vancouver’s Best Cupcake at Vancouver’s 1st Cupcake Challenge . From their menu, you can tell that Sugar Mama’s is adventurous with their flavours and isn’t afraid to play around in the kitchen. I really wanted to try the French Toast, but too bad they didn’t have it in stock at the time. I tried 7 cupcakes and overall the cupcakes are quite moist, but they’re all very dense in texture, so if you like that style of cupcakes then Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop is for you.

Everything is made from scratch daily so the selection is a bit limited. They offer, some pies, cookies, and bars, but they’re most popular for their cupcakes for sure. The cupcakes are refrigerated and I strongly suggest allowing them come to room temperature before indulging. It’s so much better or they’ll taste a bit dry.

On the table:

**Black and Tan Cupcake – 4.5/6

• Chocolaty Guinness Stout cupcake with Irish cream cheese frosting $2.75USD
• This was one of my favourites. It’s very dense, but it has a very rich and malted chocolate flavour. It was quite moist with the creamy frosting.
• The Irish Cream is a great match and it wasn’t too cheesy in taste at all. i could taste the Bailey’s, but it wasn’t overpowering or bitter in taste. It’s quite sweet, but the combination of flavours really worked.

**Pineapple Upside Up Cupcake – 4.5/6

• A Vegan spiced pineapple cake with a crushed pineapple do $2.75USD
• This was my favourite. It was the most moist of all the cupcakes I tried and it’s probably because of the pineapple. The pineapple was inside the cake batter as well as on top.
• It was a very creative interpretation of a pineapple upside down cake.
• It has no icing or buttercream, and I liked the natural sweetness from the freshly crushed pineapple topping. The pineapple was baked so it was almost like apple sauce and naturally sweet from all the sugars it released. The spices weren’t too strong and there was no obvious spice that stood out, so I wouldn’t mind if they went stronger on the spices.

The Hula Cupcake – 3/6

• Moist coconut cupcake with topped with coconut cream cheese frosting $2.75USD
• This is a seasonal special flavour.
• I love the toasted coconut topping, but I found it to be a bit dry if it wasn’t for the coconut cream cheese frosting. The coconut was also in the batter but I wanted more coconut flavour overall. I thought it looked better than it tasted and the other flavours were better.

Blackberry Delight Cupcake – 4/6

• Blackberry cake, blackberry cream cheese and lemon curd in the middle $2.75USD
• This was a filled cupcake and it was another seasonal special.
• It was made with lots of fresh blackberries in the batter and you could actually see them. It was almost like a muffin-cupcake and I wish it was a bit more airy rather than dense. It was sweet, yet tart from the berries and lemon curd. It  was decently filled with a thick and creamy lemon curd in the middle which off set the sweetness from the icing.

Elvis – 4.5/6

• Moist banana cupcake with peanut buttercream and edible gold sparkles $2.75USD
• I loved this one as well. If you’ve never tried the combination of bananas and peanut butter you’re really missing out. This one was delicious and it was made with real banana and had a sweet, thick and nutty peanut buttercream compliment. I could definitely taste the peanut butter. It was another of their cupcakes on the moister side, but still very dense.

Marilyn Monroe Cupcake – 3/6

• The original blond bombshell – buttery vanilla cupcake topped with luscious vanilla buttercream. Happy birthday, Mr. President! $2.75USD
• This is the standard vanilla cupcake, it was good, but not as memorable as the other flavours. The buttercream I find is more buttery than sugary.

Peaches N’ Cream – 3.5/6

• $2.75USD
• This is a flavour that’s available for special orders. It reminded me of the Pineapple Upside Up cupcake, but with peaches. It didn’t have crushed peaches on top, but that would have been fabulous. Instead it had a buttercream on top.

Banana Puddin’ – 5/6

• Banana cake, banana pastry cream, whipped cream, and miniature vanilla wafers $2.75USD
• I tried the cake version, which is slightly modified. It was delicious! It was more moist than all of their cupcakes. I’m not sure if it was because it was a cake, but this was definitely most memorable because the texture was perfect.
• I could see the real banana in the batter and definitely taste it too.

Triple Berry Pie – 2/6

• 5 inch mini pie $4.50 each
• An unbelievably delicious combination of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries in a buttery, flaky crust.
• They have a small selection pies that are also homemade.

• I loved all the fresh berries they use. It’s whole berries and you can definitely see and taste the freshness and quality of ingredients.
• The filling was very tart though and it made my lips pucker. I would have liked more of a crust as well because it was quite thin and it wasn’t as flaky in texture or buttery in flavour as I had hoped. Definitely sticking to the cupcakes, however I heard the cookies are great!

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