Cupcake Quest: Petsi Pies

This post is part of the Cupcake Quest series on Fork it over, Boston!

Ah, a lazy Sunday. What better thing to do than to go cupcake questing? Turns out the Somerville location of Petsi Pies is a short walk from Joel's place. We braved the sketchtacular tunnel that runs under the tracks between Somerville Ave. and Beacon St, and arrived at Petsi, an adorable little oasis on a rather boring piece of Beacon.

We decided that the cupcakes would be our lunch, so we went all out and bought three to split between the two of us. They had five flavors available: we skipped the carrot and red velvet for now. I've had a lot of red velvet lately, and carrot seemed like the least exciting of the choices.

Cupcake Lunch: The best kind of lunch. Minus the massive sugar crash a half hour later.

Peanut butter chocolate, coconut, and whoopie cupcakes.

We started out with the coconut cupcake, which had a really nice cream cheese topping. It blended well with the flavor of the coconuts. The cake, however, was a bit too dense and dry for our tastes. It was closer to a muffin consistency. I know there are people out there who prefer their cupcakes dense, but I like them on the lighter side.

Sweet and coconut-y. Yum!

Next up, a Hostess cake on steroids...the whoopie cupcake. So decadent, so rich, so food-coma-inducing. The cream in the middle balanced out the intense richness well, and the cake was moister and squishier than the coconut cupcake.

Like a Hostess cake, but much, much better.

Mmm...cream in the middle!

And finally, last but definitely not least, the peanut butter chocolate cake! The frosting tasted like the filling of a peanut butter pie: smooth, rich, creamy. The frosting-to-cake ratio was deceptive; after halving it, we found that the frosting dipped further into the cake than expected. Bonus! And the cake was moist and soft. Appearance-wise, this one is certainly high up in the ranks: beautiful and classic, with a perfect frosting swirl.

Intense. If you don't love peanut butter, this might be too much for you to handle.

Surprise! The frosting sneaks down into the cake part a bit.

The Verdict: These are super rich and reasonably priced ($2.25/each). In the future, I won't eat more than one at a time; they're a bit overwhelming if you don't have a mega sweet tooth. (Plus, I'm still recovering from the major sugar rush and crash.) Petsi Pies is definitely worth checking out, and as the name suggests, there are lots of amazing-looking pies and other treats there as well. Bonus: Owner Renee "Petsi" McLeod uses a lot of local ingredients. McLeod also owns Southern eatery Tupelo, located in Inman Square.