In this year of Cupcake Nation, I’m prioritizing U.S. travel to research cupcakes. When I read something that interests me then learn the destination is accessible by train, I book tickets without hesitation. This is how I ended up at the Pennsylvania VegFest in early June. All aboard for Lancaster!
I knew I’d find sufficient cupcakes to sample at VegFest, a vegan food festival. I didn’t know that my surroundings would offer equally delicious American history lessons.
Life is short. Let’s cover dessert first.
To set the context, this was the scene at VegFest, held June 3-4 at Lancaster’s Buchanan Park.
It was a pleasure to meet the owners of Sugar Whipped Bakery. They are good people baking good cupcakes.
The tandy cupcake in the first picture below enchanted in taste and texture. It was a sublime combination of white cake with a moderate layer of chocolate beneath light and fluffy peanut butter frosting. The bakery also takes on the challenge of gluten-free baking. I sampled its respectable chocolate peanut butter GF cupcake, seen in the second picture.
Additional VegFest research centered around cupcakes from two other bakeries.
Having conquered dessert, some savory food was necessary.
Relief took the form of comforting poutine from The Flying V Food Truck. They graciously accommodated my request for an off-menu half size. Cheers to their ability to think beyond the templates and spontaneously customize an order.
After recovering from travel and rigorous VegFest study, I spent a day exploring downtown Lancaster. First stop: Lancaster Cupcake.
The attractive bakery competed on Cupcake Wars and ranked among the “101 Best Cupcakes In America 2014.”
The bakery puts people front and center. As they eye the cupcake case, customers can read profiles of the staff currently on duty.
At its downtown shop, a display pictures the smiling faces of some lucky people. These customers won six or 12 months of cupcakes at the bakery’s 11th birthday party in 2022.
Having overstuffed the body, it was time to feed the mind. My Airbnb host was very knowledgeable of area history and told me Lancaster was among the first colonial inland cities to be established.
Walking around downtown, I found evidence of Lancaster’s historical role in patriotic publishing.
The city center is the intersection of King Street and Queen Street. A stone’s throw away is a plaque for Bailey’s Printshop, reading “Francis Bailey, official printer to both the U.S. Congress and the Commonwealth, operated a printing office on this site from 1773 to 1780. Here, he produced many historic imprints including Thomas Paine’s ‘Crisis No. 4.’”
Near the library, I found a public artwork of the Emily Dickinson poem “I dwell in Possibility.” The artwork “beckons to urban dwellers: read, rest, reflect, and return,” according to the designer.
Poetry, books, cupcakes, travel, and historical research are all sources of endless possibility. Lancaster proved fertile ground to explore all at once.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 