Looking for a perfect cupcake

My husband and I spent last Saturday looking for a perfect cupcake. If you have been in Japan and tried their sweets already then it’s not an easy task to find it in the USA. I don’t know why Japan’s cakes are almost always perfect in looks, texture and flavor but they are super good! Therefore our standards are already high up there. But we tried anyway. Because I‘m thinking of entering a cupcake contest I thought I need to do homework. We drove 30 minutes in heavy rain to the first store. The interior of the store had not much light - that gave me a bad impression - and just two customers inside - US. We selected coconut white cupcake and double chocolate cake with hot chocolate with homemade cinnamon marshmallows.


The coconut cupcake was too dry and hot chocolate was lukewarm. Also the marshmallows were way too sweet.
On to the next place. Saint Cupcake was cute little store sharing with another business behind it. Very simply decorated cupcakes were good, just not great. They have vegan cupcakes too. They packed our orders in a cute little box. I wish they had a place to sit down and eat.  We were already sugared out so decided not to go Papa Hayden. I like the store but sometimes it is too rich and too sweet.We really miss Japanese sweets store like La Palme D'or Patisserie in Hawaii.



After all that sugar intake I still l had my usual fix of homemade hot chocolate in my favorite mug at evening. I bought the mug from Starbucks around Valentine’s day 6 years ago. IT has the word “love” on front and inside the mug says “love” in Chinese character.