Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery

In a word: Could be your cup(cake) of tea.

The specs: #0454 
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at 77 Square, Isthmus, Madison Dining Online, Yelp, bigYELLOWBowl, QSC, gastropacalypse, first day report from Isthmus; official web site,

Latest Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery news and reviews

JM ate the Porchlight pancakes with a chocolate strawberry cupcake.
Nichole ate the Porchlight orzo salad with an orange banana cupcake.
Ross ate the potato leek soup, Sprecher root beer, and banana pecan cream cheese cupcake.
Samantha ate the half house salad with a cappuccino and a raspberry vanilla cupcake.
The bill was $30, or $7.50/person, plus tip.
Nichole gave Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery a B+; JM gave Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery an A-; Ross and Samantha gave Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery an A (see our grading rubric).

So, after Circolo's Atkins-like protein loading, we needed to celebrate a successful wedding task done and, incidentally, a birthday. We headed to Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery to get some vegetables and carbs.

Ross's potato leek soup was very creamy, and Sam's house salad was fresh. JM and Nichole appreciated the care the Porchlight folks had put into their pancake mix and orzo salad, respectively. The pancakes really soaked up the syrup, which was nothing too special, and the pasta salad was very dilly and had a nice quantity of good Havarti and snappy peas.

Of course, you come to a cupcakery for cupcakes. These were very good, indeed, especially if you like a light, fluffy frosting; the texture is delicate and the recipe must be simply superb. Ross graciously submitted to a rendition of "Happy Birthday to You" even after the betatted server called him a "sucka" for letting us submit him to annuitized birthday torture.

Comments

[CJ]

Yeah, I was personally disappointed to find that their frosting was of the light-and-fluffy variety, as I much prefer a heavier frosting. Alas! That said, the food I had was good, as were the cupcakes, despite my indifference to the frosting.

[Kyle]

I'll balance that out by saying that I can't stand heavy, thick, mouth-coating frosting. Blech. This stuff, however, is incredible and delicious.

Surprising that nobody went for one of the stratas, but those have gotten all the early press, so I don't blame you for branching out.

[Ken]

Were the flavors as good as advertised by the cupcake names??? You mention the frosting & texture, but I don't see any mention of the flavors, so assume they were good / above average.

[catmc]

actually, i was disappointed with the cupcakes. the actual cake tasted from the box and the icing was good, but not notable. as the above commenter pointed out, to be a "cupcakery", one would expect to-die-for cupcakes. these, quite simply, are not.

[Tracy]

I've found the food and the cupcakes to be quite tasty. The decor and especially the signage, however, really needs some improvement. A little extra effort there could really propel them past being "middle of the road" to being someplace really special.

[Timmy]

Better than average cupcakes with fun flavor combinations. Definitely worth a visit for a sweet snack.

[Rachel]

I also was hoping for more of your opinions on the cupcakes themselves - the names were all quite detailed - but did they actually have those flavors?

[Brett Myers]

I was just at a casual wedding reception this weekend and they had Daisy cupcakes instead of wedding cake. I thought they were pretty darn good. The flavor combos were nice, especially strawberry/chocolate and raspberry/lemon cake. I heard the frostings are all flavored only with natural fruit with no added colorings, which certainly explains the awesomeness of the strawberry icing.

[Homer J]

I thought the texture of the cupcake was not pleasant. The frosting had a terrible mouth feel. yuck. It was unmistakable that is from scratch, just not in a good way.

[Chris]

I have been to several larger cities where they have cupcake specific places. With that said, I was happy to see this come to Madison. However, I must say I was very disappointed. The cupcakes should be the star of the show at this place, and they are not. They were in fact bad, the cake was not good, and I too found the icing terrible. Too bad we bought a box of different flavors and ended up throwing 2-3 of them away.

[Tracy]

Had a strata there today and tried some cupcakes. The French Toast Strata was served piping hot, but mainly it just tasted like a standard fluffy egg dish. The maple flavor was detectable but wasn't present throughout the dish. There was a nice serving of perfect spicy potatoes with the dish and a heap o' fruit. The mocha/chocolate cupcake was tasty, but not amazing. The raspberry/vanilla cupcake was very boring: the frosting was pink but barely tasted of raspberry; the cupcake just tasted like white cake. Cupcakes are standard homemade size yet are $2.50; this is a mystery.

[ap]

Went for lunch last weekend. Yummy grilled cheese (a little heavy on the butter though, if that can be a complaint). Great veggie chili. OK champaign cupcake with strawberry frosting, although it pretty much tasted like a vanilla cupcake only not as sweet.

[PWC&OBM]

I found the cupcakes to be just okay. I enjoyed the frosting, it was light and not too sugary. The cake was a little blah, pretty dry, decent flavor but nothing I couldn't get out of a box.

I also had a turkey/bacon/avacodo sandwich. It was pretty but the bread was toasted and very thick, which resulted in the roof of my mouth being pretty cut up. I tried a bite of my husband's meatloaf and it was also good.

I would probably go back to try more dishes but skip the cupcakes.

[katie]

i was so happy to see a cupcakery in madison that i had to stop in and try out the cupcakes on saturday. we tried the lemon, blueberry and chocolate/coconut. these were not good. at all. all three of the cakes were extremely dry, the frosting was tasteless, and they were overpriced. i live in chicago, where the cupcakes are all in the same price range as daisy's, but the cakes are 2-3 times the size.

[Kyle]

I'd say there has been a distinct turn for the worse in the quality of the cupcakes since they opened. My first couple visits were quite good; the last few have been disappointing.

I haven't had the food-proper since the early days of Daisy, but it seems like their attention might be shifting away from the "Cupcakery" aspect. I think their new sandwich board out front only refers to them as "Daisy Cafe."

[AK]

Boo! First time I went, they only had one kind of cupcake left. Second time I went for food. They were out of the vegetarian meatloaf (an issue for the vegetarian in our group). The 666 chili was really thin and not worth the $. The mediterranean sandwich was meh. Turns out endamane hummus is bland. Who knew? Two of us had cupcakes and were extremely underwhelmed. My husband was left pining for boxed cake mix. Sorry Daisy, we won't be back.