Tour de Farce, part 6 -- Still in D.C.

DAY FOUR, Saturday, April 9

1:00 p.m.

We get back in the car and drive out to the northeast corner of D.C. to report our car incident at the other police station.  The very friendly folks at this station tell us we can file a complaint against the other station for refusing to take the report.  We decline, we just want to be done with this business.  After about an hour, we are finally finished!  Is there somewhere we can get a little breakfast around here?  "There's a Dunkin' Donuts just down the block."  Heh heh, cops and donuts, heh heh...okay, let's get the hell out of here.

3:00 p.m.  Short stack -- Julia's Empanadas

This little storefront on U St. carries about 10 types of empanadas daily, from sweet fruit empanadas to Jamaican style-beef patties.  I order the lovely saltenas, with curried chicken, potato, peas, sliced hard-boiled egg, and lots of onion.  The filling to pastry ratio is excellent, though the plain, egg-brushed pastry is a little on the tough side.  Would have been a perfect no-mess portable snack for a picnic under the cherry blossoms, if we had made it over there.  Dun dun dun!

Grade: A-

Total: $3.18

Will I return?  Sure.  I bet they'd be great snacks for the car.

Short stack -- Cakelove

Poor D.C.  Cakelove ain't Sugar Sweet Sunshine, I'll tell you that.  The cupcakes are beautiful, but why are they getting tough and cold in the refrigerated case?  I got two cupcakes -- the chocolate with strawberry buttercream and very pretty bits of chopped strawberry, and the vanilla with amaretto icing.  I allowed the cupcakes to come to room temperature and bit in.  The satiny buttercream was lovely and didn't overpower the cake as icing sometimes can.  But the chocolate cake was deeply disappointing -- the crumb was not tender enough and it didn't have enough chocolate oomph, a problem I encounter when I use Scharffen Berger chocolate at home.  I didn't even bother with the Amaretto -- I think vanilla cakes are even harder to get right.  And Cakelove charges a whopping $3 per cupcake, TWICE AS MUCH as Sugar Sweet Sunshine charges here in uber-expensive New York City.  At that price, I should get some love with my cake.

Grade: C-

Total: $6 (!) for two refrigerator burned cupcakes

Will I return?  No way.  There's a lot of diabetes in my family.  Every simple carb counts, so if there are vials of insulin in my future, I only want to consume kCals worth becoming ill for.

Cakelove

1506 U Street, NW, D.C.

202.588.7100