The Shop: Cupcake Royale
Location: Seattle, WA, USA
When we received a tip-off from a friend that Cupcake Royale in Seattle had amazing ice cream, we were more than a little bit skeptical. We knew they had great cupcakes, but can you really have great cupcakes and great ice cream? Happily, we learned that the answer is yes.
Cupcake Royale has six locations around Seattle; we opted for the location conveniently close to the famous Pike Place Market. We had already eaten ice cream earlier in the day, but they were offering $2 scoops for National Ice Cream day, which was too good to pass up. The first thing you notice is a colorful selection of cupcakes and cake pops in front of your eyes, but we were not tempted. Our eyes were then drawn to the ice cream flavor board. They had a small but nice selection of flavors. Some were more normal, like “Triple Vanilla” and “Oregon Hill Strawberry”, but what stood out to us were the ones with cupcake mix-ins like “Red Velvet Cupcake”.
Across our group, we were able to try or buy almost every flavor. The verdict: delicious! In general, we liked the cupcake ice cream flavors the best; in addition to being delicious, they were not too heavy and had the perfect ratio of cupcake mix-in to ice cream. Our least favorite was “Caramel and Sea Salt”, it tasted burnt, which our server fairly warned us about. If you try that one first, don’t be put off by it.
The Great: Salted Caramel Cupcake ice cream, Red Velvet Cupcake ice cream
The Not-so-Great: Caramel with Sea Salt ice cream.
Pro tip: Sometimes they offer Happy Hour on cupcakes, buy 3 get 3 free. This is common at the end of the night about 30 minutes before closing.
Bottom Line: If you love both cupcakes and ice cream, this is the place for you. If some members in your group want cupcakes and some want ice cream, this is also the place for you.