I'm not totally sure what I was expecting, but from the name "Cupcake Camp" my thoughts vaguely had to do with Kumbaya Cupcakes or "Capture the Cupcake" games. In reality, from what I could tell, Cupcake Camp was more like a mildly organized cupcake free-for-all bonanza in which cupcake-loving San Franciscans could bring their cupcakes for people to eat. For free. You didn't even have to bake them yourself! You could just bring store-bought cupcakes and set them up at a table and give them to people. That's it!
Now, I love cupcakes. So this was a cool, interesting thing to experience. Several people brought multitudes of miniature cupcakes in several different flavors — so I tried a spicy gingerbread-y mini-cupcake and a peanut butter chocolate chip mini-cupcake from the same baker (or group of bakers at this one table). And it was neat to see the variety and the creativity put into making them all.
I also tried a filled Hostess-style cupcake which was good, though extremely sweet.
Thing is, if you tell a whole city of people that there will be free cupcakes if you just show up at this place on a Sunday afternoon, there will be cupcake chaos.
It was insanely crowded! There was a kind of system: there was a set schedule posted of which cupcakes would be at which tables inside the venue, with each table changing bakers every 15 minutes. And every person was allowed to eat five cupcakes, so the bakers would mark on our tickets when we'd go up to get a cupcake. But there were so many people there, there was never not a line in front of each table, and if you wanted to wait in another line, you had to squeeeeze through the throng of patiently waiting cupcake lovers (and general fans of free treats) and hope you there would be enough cupcakes for everyone in line.
I'm glad I went, though next year I'm showing up with a team of people so we can divide, conquer and take bites of each others' cupcakes. I might also put on some of those football player shoulder pads.
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