French Meadow Bakery: Yellow Cupcakes

I have always thought that it would be a sad, sad day indeed when I would be disappointed by a cupcake. I mean... it's a cupcake! It merges the deliciousness of cake with the portability of muffins, and tops it off with frosting, which, hello, it's frosting and frosting is good times. Well, in the correct portions. I think this logical chain speaks for itself, no? Well, bad news, everyone: I have been disappointed by a cupcake, and it is indeed, a sad day. The offending cupcake in question comes from French Meadow Bakery (and full disclosure, the site was down for maintenance when I tried to open it for this review, so link-clicker beware). I'll admit, when I first found these yellow cupcakes in the baker's freezer section of Sunflower Market, I thought the company was new to the GF scene. Nope, turns out they've had frozen, ready-to-back cookies and brownies in the freezers of discerning grocers for some time. I hadn't, however, seen what Sunflower was offering before- cakes, cupcakes, and individually-wrapped muffins. Looking closer, I saw something unique- yellow cake! As most store-offered GF cupcakes will be either chocolate or vanilla, I grabbed the yellow ones for a new experience.
Okay, first... we should take a look at these things. So, behold:


I'll be honest: that's a high frosting-to-cupcake ratio. And that's okay, because these cupcakes are fairly small- maybe about three inches high?- indicating a high snackability. In practice? Well... the first thing that happened with all that frosting is that it melted all over Creation. To be honest, this was expected. You don't heat up a cupcake without the frosting melting all over creation. Still, the amount of frosting made this more annoying than it would otherwise be. Anyway, once I had a properly-heated cupcake, I took my first, tentative bites.

Ehhhhhhh. The cupcake part was okay- not mind-blowing- and a little dry, to boot. The frosting was a huge disappointment. I think they were going for a "vanilla" flavoring, but they got off the train well before reaching the right station, so to speak. The frosting also carried a somewhat thick texture, thick enough that when I was done with my cupcake and needed to clean my plate, the leftover frosting (which was voluminous) didn't really want to wash down the drain too easily. Troubling, indeed! Upon further reflection, this might be a symptom of French Meadow's attempt to widen the market for their cupcakes. You see, these things aren't only gluten-free, but lactose-free and peanut-free. Yes, it's the ol' "we're already doing this without gluten, let's see what else we can leave out" problem. Sometimes, the chefs behind these moves turn out wonderfully tasty food. Sometimes, not so much. File this under the latter category.

So, the tl;dr version is: I didn't like them. They have a few other cake/cupcake selections that I hope to review at some point, in the hopes that maybe these guys are the odd ones out in the product line. I did pick up some muffins, too; look for the review on those, soon.