Remember those Crumbs cupcakes that were up for auction on eBay for $300 after the bakery chain’s mass closing in July? Well, they’ve got nothing on this mind-boggling creation: The most expensive cupcake in the world clocks in at $900. Nine. Hundred. Dollars. Uh... Yikes.
Created by Toronto bakery Le Dolci, the extravagant confection was apparently a custom order. According to Food Beast, the planning for it began when a man approached owner Lisa Sanguedolce with a completely over-the-top cupcake request for his wife’s birthday. The resulting morsel incorporated all of the wife’s favorite things — namely shiny things and extremely expensive alcohol — and took one cake designer and two pastry chefs two days to make.
So what exactly about this particular cupcake warrants a $900 price tag? First We Feast lists the ingredients as follows:
- A pastry cream filling flavored with a $1,000 bottle of Krug Collection Brut Champagne
- Buttercream frosting made from butter from Normandy, 70 percent cacao chocolate from Tuscan chocolatier Amedei, specialty coffee, French sea salt, organic cane sugar, and Tahitian vanilla beans
- A chocolate cup featuring gold flakes, gold strips, and diamonds made out of sugar
- A garnish of edible gold fondant flora and fauna, as well as champagne caviar bubbles made using molecular gastronomy
- A drizzle of 21-year-old Courvoisier cognac
Why did the butter have to come from Normandy? What’s so special about French sea salt? How exactly does one make caviar bubbles with molecular gastronomy? No idea, but if you’re looking for a picture of excess in cupcake form, it’s safe to say that you’ve found it.
Now, what I’m not sure about is whether the price is in Canadian dollars or U.S. dollars. Given that the bakery is in Toronto, it would make sense if it were Canadian dollars — in which case the price in U.S. currency is slightly cheaper. I say “slightly,” though, because with the current exchange rate of $1.09 Canadian to the U.S. dollar, it’s still $822.56. And if it’s $900 U.S.? Well, then, it’s $984.73 Canadian.
The previous reigning champ for the title of Most Ridiculously Expensive Cupcake Ever, by the way, comes from Las Vegas resort and casino the Palazzo. At $750, the Decadence D’Or cupcake has a few things in common with the Le Dolci creation; it, too, uses butter from a very specific location in its frosting, and edible gold leaves add a bit of “I’m so wealthy I can literally eat my money” cache. It also, however, contains hand-pollinated and harvested Tahitian Gold vanilla caviar. I guess the molecular gastronomy version is more expensive than the rustic artisanal version? Or something?
Anyway, for the curious, here’s a list of seven other things you can buy with $900 that you’ll probably get more mileage out of than a cupcake:
- Three 16GB iPad minis at $299 each.
- One month’s rent in one of these five Los Angeles neighborhoods.
- 112 and a half months of Netflix at $7.99 per month.
- 257 gallons of regular gasoline at $3.50 a gallon.
- Two to three round-trip JetBlue flights between New York’s JFK airport and Bermuda in October at $387.90 per round-trip.
- Two Playstation 4 consoles at $399 and a game or two.
- 450 bottles of Two Buck Chuck.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over here, expressly not spending $900 on a pastry.
Images: Giphy (2)
