CAKO BAKERY...THEY'RE CUPCAKE-A-LICIOIUS

Cako Bakery is the purveyor of cupcakes.  Yes there are any number of cupcake bakeries around these days especially here in San Francisco where they were all the rage a few years ago and some of the places have managed to hang around even with the recent surge in pie as being all the current rage.  If the food is good you can overcome the ebbs and flow of popularity and Cako is one of those places.  I've been a fan for sometime and sadly for my waistline even have one of their frequent buyer cards--5 punches gets you a free cupcake.  Let's just say I've had several.  

While they have a new location in the food court of the Westfield Mall I've mostly been to their main pop-up location at Powell and O'Farrell.  They have cupcakes lined up in their window so you can't miss it.

They do an array of flavors and some of my favorites include the Red Velvet--red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, My Buttercup--chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and peanut butter cups, 24 Karat--carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and Apple Pie--apple cake with vanilla frosting, apple compote and graham cracker crumbles.  

And yes my love of cream cheese frosting factors into my favorites and at Cako they do it very well.  It's appropriately creamy and tangy--not overly sweetened and of course they put enough on so that you have some with every bite of cupcake.  The frosting is always a big key for me as some places it seems you just get a dab, but not here, there is plenty to go around.  

The cake part of the cupcakes is also most and flavorful, more so than a number of the other places in town I have tried (though not as moist as the ones I had at a Sprinkles in LA but still better than most here).  

Every now and then they like to try out new flavors.  One recent trip they had a blueberry cheese cake which was okay but they needed to pump up the blueberry in the cake part as the flavor was getting lost with the cream cheese icing--good but needed a little work to be really good.  

They also do seasonal flavors like the pumpkin cheesecake one you see above.  Dubious at first I did actually like this after tasting it.  It was very moist and the pumpkin and spice was not overwhelming the cheese cake part in the cake and it balanced nicely with the cream cheese frosting.  Overall, a winner but it's seasonal folks so get it while they have it.  

If you are ever at the Westfield Center or out shopping in Union Square make sure to stop by and for a sweet treat to pump up your energy for more shopping.  And they do mini cupcakes also in case you can't decide which large size to get and want a little taste of different ones.