The Cupcake Store and The Friendly Used Book Store

Before heading out, we walked the short distance from Kaffee Meiste over to the other side of the strip mall where these two businesses reside...

I was actually planning on just going to the cupcake place...

but was tempted by the rolling carts filled with used books and movies (yes, on VHS and yes we still have a VHS player, ha ha!)....

Of course, this coupon was begging to be used. For the record, I spent only $14 for two dozen mini cupcakes consisting of a wide variety of flavors. Inside is a big chart with the flavors they offer, plus a case full of so many great choices (full size and mini).


The store also sells cute baby items (for girls) like hair barrettes/bows, dresses and cupcake related knick knacks.



The bakery also sold macarons (vanilla wth chocolate, pistachio and birthday cake) for $1.50 each.

The damage - two dozen mini cupcakes for $14 (half price thanks to the coupon!). Plus, my LIFE book, "Christmas Around the World" (only $1.50) and the antiquated VHS move, "Mary Poppins" (only a QUARTER!)! Believe it or not, I haven't watched that movie the whole way through, just snippets here and there (hangs head in shame).

We didn't browse inside too much because it was starting to get hot and we wanted to get home. The used book store only had one staff member; the store is affiliated with the Santee Public Library, just a few doors down.  One of the rolling carts outside just had Christmas books along with holiday/Christmas cookbooks.  'Tis the season, eh.

Here's a view of one of the cupcake boxes. We told the girl to choose several of each flavor for us (you will see the list with the flavors circled by Bert a few photos down)...

These macs were not so good. They were not fresh but not quite stale either. The shells were too dry. The filling seemed like a super soft buttercream or dare I say, frosting?  Either way, I did NOT like them but TC enjoyed the birthday cake flavor.

If you peer closely, you can see the circled bullets. The "Mancake" flavor, by the way is a chocolate cupcake topped with maple frosting and bacon pieces (I liked it!). We liked the S'mores flavor as well as the banana (which had a small piece of banana within).  The larger size cupcakes had more elaborate topping/frosting treatments, but we opted to get the mini's to get more of a flavor assortment.

These cupcakes were enjoyed later that evening at a friend's house party. The more popular ones, judging by what was leftover later that evening were all of the chocolate based cupcakes (including chocolate mint and the chocolate peanut butter), and the red velvet. Not popular - lemon and carrot cake.

They all looked good to me though! I really liked the selection and the price point, $2.75 for the regular size/$1.50 for the mini; some other places charge $3 and up for the larger sized cupcakes. It's a cute little shop with so many different flavors (some are featured on a rotating basis). I still have one more coupon on my web-app so I can't wait to use it again to get cupcakes for a party dessert.

The Cupcake Store
9225 Carlton Hills Blvd., Suite 7
Santee, CA 92071
(619) 779-7777

Their fb page

The Friendly Used Book Store
(next door to the Cupcake store!), Suite 7
(619) 596-1525

All right, here is one of the more popular songs from "The Sound of Music". This is the original:

So nice and so bland and so safe...

and now THIS is how it should be, the METAL version:

RRRRAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! (waves arms frantically in the air while forming the "horns" symbol)

If you like it jazzy, here is Tony Bennett's version from his album "A Swingin' Christmas", which I own, no lie!:

Love his phrasing! Holy $#it! He still has the magic touch! My mom loves him (but Tom Jones more)!  Have you heard his new version of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes"; it's a duet with none other than Lady Gaga! It's not too shabby!

Our next planned stop was also "in the area", just a couple of street lights away...