My friends and I recently checked out a BYOB Cupcake Workshop. It was at Little Hands Art and Cooking Studio in the East Falls area of Philadelphia, PA. The concept of it sounded SO fun! A little wine, a little baking, and of course eating cupcakes!
My friends all bought a Groupon or Living Social Deal for the workshop. I had missed the deadline for the deal, so I ended up paying the actual price of $25. I think we went into it with high expectations…that it would be hands on, we would learn something new, and we would each come home with a batch of cupcakes. Sadly, it did not live up to our expectations.
The interior of the studio was small, but cute. There were not different cooking stations set up, as I had imagined. Instead, there was one table at the front of the room, with three rows of wooden chairs facing it for us to watch as the audience. The woman conducting the workshop told us the history of the studio and that they started out doing classes for younger children. In my opinion, that is what they should stick to because the entire class was very, VERY basic.
There were two mixers set up and we soon learned we would only be making two batches of cupcakes for the entire class of 18 people. People from the group took turns going up to do a little job. Although everyone in the crowd was over 21 and drinking wine, it was still not entertaining to see one person go up and measure flour or add in a little vanilla. We didn’t learn anything new – I at least thought they would pass along some piece of useful information!!
We talked amongst ourselves as the Sweet Mama Apple Pie Cupcakes were baking in the oven. Then, while they cooled, they showed us how to make the icing, again with audience members taking turns to measure ingredients. There was an apple pie filling that was pre-made in advance (so we didn’t get to see how that was made), and then the everyone in the class got to decorate their own cupcakes.
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| My friends, me, and our cupcakes |
It was upsetting to see that they ran out of the filling for the cupcakes before everyone had a chance to add it to their cupcakes. So some people went without it. We got to ice only TWO cupcakes each to take home. JUST TWO! For two cupcakes and getting no new information from this class, I was highly disappointed to have just spent $25 on this. I would rather buy a bunch of cupcakes from a gourmet bakery or make my own at home at that rate!
OH and the worst part!? (Yes, it gets worse!!!!) They did not even give us the recipe to take home with us. How hard is it to print up a recipe and hand it out at the end of the night? Or give it to us in the beginning to follow along? Nope – they said that if we provided our email address, they would email us the recipe. Well, it has been four days since the workshop, and still no recipe in my inbox.
I hate giving a bad review, but unfortunately I wouldn’t recommend these cupcake workshops to any adults that have been in a kitchen before. If someone has NEVER baked in their life, maybe it would be interesting to them. It might also be fun for something like a middle schooler’s birthday party. I would definitely recommend it for a crowd of younger children.
**Updates as of 8/2021: Their website no longer exists.**
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