Okay y’all, I got spoiled in New York City.  I ate many a delicious cupcake, mainly at my Upper East Side neighbors Crumbs and Two Little Red Hens.  And while New York City doesn’t have the monopoly on all good food (there’s some pretty rocking authentic Mexican in the Triangle y’all) i’m afraid that they might have the monopoly on amazing cupcakes.

Or maybe I just havent found a good cupcake in the Triangle yet.  Sugarland, which is close to the Haines Art Center where I spent  the majority of my time the past few years, caused me much excitement when it opened but makes the most dismal cupcakes with icky frosting that sticks to the back of your throat like a high fructose plastic sheen.

Now Bliss Boutique Bakery, located in the old Three Cups space next to Sandwhich, is nowhere near as terrible as Sugarland.  Actually, bliss cupcakes aren’t bad at all–they’re pretty delicious in a pinch, all things considered.  But they do not nearly come close to the perfection of, say, Two Little Red Hens’ red velvet cupcake.

Bliss has a set of daily cupcakes and then specials for each day of the week.  The day I visited was a Monday, and I opted for the special Snicker caramel cupcake, which is yellow cake filled with caramel made at Bliss and topped with chocolate buttercream and a little Snicker garnish.  A good cupcake, but with a few issues: the chocolate butter cream is too light on the chocolate, the cupcake could’ve used a bit more of the really excellent caramel filling, and I feel that the cake could be a little lighter.  The chocolate ganache icing is far more chocolatey but almost too rich and thick, not really frosting-y at all.  The vanilla on vanilla is fairly solid, the buttercream icing isn’t as curiously flavorless as the chocolate buttercream.

Between 5:30 and 7:30 Bliss has “cupcake happy hour” where you can get up to six cupcakes for half price (hence the above assortment).  Not a bad deal.  I’d like to go back and try some of the other daily specials, especially Wednesday’s red velvet cake and Thursday’s dulce de leche (anyone tried them?)  Some of their other baked goods look promising.  Bliss needs to do a bit more tinkering before it achieves the cupcake perfection I found in New York, but for now it will suffice.