Taking is tea is pretty fun. You sip and giggle and kick back. This weekend our tea drinking trio went to Crown and Crumpet in Ghiradelli square. With modernized cottage decor, the one room tea shop has the ambiance of an Amy Butler ad complete with flatscreen faux fire. We had the Tea for Three with a pot of tea each. My Sakrambo description read,

"Peppery cherries work in harmony with rosemary undertones in this Japanese blend. Playing lightly on your tongue; a sweet symphony you don’t want to pass up."

We agreed the sandwiches here were better than elsewhere but didn't care for the little pink cupcakes at the end. The Queen Elizabeth chocolate rounds on sale were utterly charming.

Afterwards, we went to Kara's Cupcakes. I took a half dozen to go for father's day but ate the fleur de sel when I got home. During transport - 2 small blocks of walking and a relatively calm Cal train ride home - the cupcake had collapsed and the filling was indistinguishable from the cake. There wasn't a strong flavor of caramel or the sweet vs salty hit I was expecting, and while the cake was perfectly light and moist, the frosting was almost felt too heavy and dense in comparison.

The next day the family ate the rest of the cupcakes and the favorite seemed to be the coffee and especially the chocolate with Ghiradelli chocolate topping. Each cupcake seems to have its own cake texture and frosting characteristics, so the denser curd filled lemon cupcake held up better than the fleur de sel, but I want to try the buttermilk vanilla before passing judgment.