Does Mumbai need more cupcakes? What you think doesn’t really batter because there’s a new cupcake store in Bandra called Cocolicious, with a whole batch of frosted treats waiting to be licked. Well, maybe just one more batch, you know, before the year ends.

Analyse This

Dressed in frosting pink with illustrations of cupcakes, three tiered trays and elegant dessert spoons, Cocolicious, predictably pretty, has a counter full of 'gifts' and even seats two parties. This week-old sweet shop is run by Natasha D'souza, who until last year was a financial analyst, one that didn’t know how to bake. “I borrowed a few recipes from my mum during Diwali of 2010, spent the year practising and then decided just last month to start this place,” she says.  Dream a little scheme!

The rack at Cocolicious is decked with a bunch of different cupcake flavours – blueberry, strawberry, vanilla, dark chocolate, caramel, Oreo, Irish cream – that come in sturdy pink boxes. A lick of the dark chocolate one revealed delicious icing which was neither overwhelmingly sweet nor too thick. This decadently dark swirl coiffed yum cake that didn’t taste like it had been sitting at the bakery for too long. Unfortunately, we could not say the same about the Oreo, which came with a dry, crumbly bottom and super-sweet frosting. Ultimately, it was with the blueberry version (our favourite) where the cake was at its moist best, hiding within it blueberry jam. Despite our liking for the chocolate, we recommend the fruit cupcakes here for we’ve had better cocoa versions elsewhere (try Natalia’s). Natasha however, says that the carrot-date ones are the best, but they weren’t in the day we visited. Availability of certain flavours and store timings (better visit post noon) are still a little erratic as Natasha tries to gauge the demand and keep up with orders.

Sweet Study

Besides cupcakes, Cocolicious also plans to introduce cheesecakes and other desserts, one of which – a chocolate dome – we sampled yesterday. A strong taste of cocoa powder and strange sticky texture led us to believe that they should stick to the cupcakes. They’ll even have “gourmet sandwiches” to cash in on the traffic of students at the coaching class next door. While ham and cheese and barbeque chicken fillings sound good, the incongruous samosas and upma we spotted on the last shelf of the counter need to go. Hungry next-door students or not!

Au Revoir?

As we gathered our cupcakes, the last ones for the year, someone in the group predicted they’ll be dumped for another kind of sweetheart in 2012. What do we think? You’ll have to wait until we work on the frost analysis.

Getting there: Cocolicious, ground floor, 16th Road, next to Shiv Sagar, Bandra (W), Rs 50 per cupcake.