Once upon a time in the District, there was a young lawyer who quit his job as an attorney to pursue his real passion: « Baking cakes from scratch » His name was Warren Brown. Nineteen months later he opened his first bakery with cupcakes as its main feature. The baked goods shop's name was cakelove. Three weeks into the grand opening, word-of-mouth promotion elevated the tiny pattiserie into cultdom with people lining up to get their sugar fix.

Almost four years later, it has indeed become a dc institution just like Madam's Organ in georgetown Adams-Morgan though this one has much much more frosting on it. There are now two cakelove shops (the original one at U Street and a recently-opened one in the getting-hipper-by-the-minute area of downtown Silver Spring) and a cafe called lovecafé serving all cakelove gourmandises, light entrées and beverages.

The sit-in version of cakelove also proved to be successful. Located just across from the original cakelove bakery at DC's up-and-coming bohemian neighborhoods, U Street, lovecafé is the perfect spot to meet up with your friends (not too many though, because it's tiny) and relax among the vintage furniture strewn all across the rectangular eatery.

Obviously all the stories about its success made me a bit skeptical on how good it actually was. Now and then I heard people saying that their cupcake is actually not good at all. Most often people complained that they're dry and the frosting was hard. So when we went there after our brunch at Tabaq Bistro, I didn't really expect much.

I guess sometimes things are as good as they seemed (^_^) I got this Strawberry on Chocolate cupcake. It's basically chocolate cupcake (double-dipped in chocolate ganache, they said) with strawberries & cream frosting. Granted it was not exactly heavenly but I'd be lying if that wasn't the best cupcake I've tried. (And believe me, if you've lived in the States long enough, you'll eat tons of cupcakes since it seems to be the one thing everybody knows how to make, those baked sugary simple carb confections always make an appearance at potlucks.) The chocolate base was actually chocolate-y, not just sweet & brown like they normally would and the texture was heavier than most over-raised home-made cupcakes. The frosting was sweet (well, it was cream & sugar, it'd be a bit hard to make it not sweet) but I don't think it was too sweet, plus you can taste the strawberry instead of just tasting butter and sugar.

But... I guess cakelove will have to settle for mixed reviews instead of raves. Even though Octa & I loved it, Weize and Myra weren't too impressed. They think it was simply too sweet. Hmm... Octa & I are the sweeter of the bunch though... LOL j/k.