Inspired my Mary rating Caroline's blog and my post-lunch desire to help people, I have purchased and consumed a cupcake, which I will now rate for your munching pleasure. It uses ice skating's time-honored judging technique: start with your maximum possible score, then deduct for errors. As the foodstuff being rated is a cupcake, it is starting, naturally, with a 10. Maybe an 11. Efforts by the Canadian judges to tamper with my scoring will be met with the highest possible scorn in the worldwide judging arena.
-1: Too expensive. You're not in Manhattan anymore, SCC! $2.10 for your itty bitty cupcake is a major rip-off. And do you think anyone is crazy enough to pay $4 for a "large" cupcake? If it costs $4, it should be as big as my head!
-.5: Staff Incompetence. Your staff girl did not know that there was a difference between devil's food and chocolate cake. Even if you don't sell any devil's food in your store, you've got no business working in a cupcake store if you aren't aware of the EXISTENCE of devil's food cake.
-2: Hard icing! To me, both the cupcake and its icing should be soft. If i want hard icing, I will eat a doughnut. Sayeth Hans D: "putting hard icing on a cupcake is like getting a comfortable mattress and putting plywood on top of it." While I think that is a bit harsh, it is rather like one of those stiff comforters that does not move with you, but rather hovers above you like a force field. A technical failure to achieve the basic requirements of a cupcake leads to a major point deduction.
Final rating for the Soho Cupcake Company: 6.5. Better luck next time! Perhaps consider adding the triple axel to up your maximum score.