So for my baby shower, I really wanted to keep everything vegan and let my friends and family enjoy some genuinely good vegan treats. Gigi’s Cupcakes in Tampa is very well known for their delicious cupcakes. Back in January I called to ask if they had any vegan options. Thankfully they did!! They said as long as I gave them a few days’ notice they could do vegan cupcakes. So we set up a cupcake tasting.

First of all, let me say that I had done a tasting at another Tampa bakery which promised me they would provide me vegan options and then delivered cakes to taste with dairy in them. Needless to say I was ill for several hours afterward. I didn’t want to get sick or waste my time at Gigi’s so I called them before the tasting to tell them about my other experience and make sure they knew what “vegan” was. Stacey and Jessica told me that they had almond milk, soy milk, Tofutti cream cheese and vegan butters. They had it DOWN! I was thrilled.

Now what Gigi’s is known for is the delicious cupcakes they have…but they are also BEAUTIFUL. I was thrilled to go to the tasting!

They prepared vanilla and chocolate cupcakes for us, as well as their pumpkin spice cupcake, and then we had chocolate avocado frosting as well as plain vanilla. We devoured the cupcakes (my mom, husband and I,) and my mom who NEVER likes cupcakes (she always complains how sweet they are or they are too dry, too moist, too “cakey,”) LOVED them. She said they were THE best cupcakes she had ever had. And that they were much better than any vegan cupcakes I had made. (well plfffff to her!) But I definitely agreed. We then were chatting about different frosting flavors and Jessica overheard us and asked if we wanted her to make us any other frostings. On the spot she made us lemon and raspberry! BOTH were phenomenal. But for a pregnant woman, citrus cravings are crazy, so I was obsessing over the lemon!

When the ladies asked us what we thought we said we’re ready to order! They did chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, and then we had the chocolate with chocolate avocado frosting, raspberry frosting as well as chocolate hazelnut butter frosting (made with Justin’s Nut Butter – which is vegan. And another side note on the hazelnut is that Gigi’s didn’t have any Justin’s to use, so they let me bring them a tub of Justin’s Hazelnut Butter and they used it since it is vegan, instead of Nutella! I was thrilled just because they were going the distance to make a very happy customer! ) We also had vanilla cupcakes with: lemon frosting, raspberry frosting, their signature “Wedding Cake” frosting which is just white frosting with pink sprinkles and it is SO pretty, their signature “Birthday cake” frosting which was pink with circle sprinkles (since it was a shower to celebrate my soon to be born baby girl!)

Now let me tell you, we decided to order the mini cupcakes, which you order by the dozen. So we had 7 dozen cupcakes lol. They package them in these great boxes, that hold them very still and we had GIANT boxes of cupcakes to take with us when we finally picked them up a few months later. My shower ended up having about 30 people…and 84 cupcakes…not quite 3 per person, but hey. So we had 0 cupcakes left. EVERYONE loved the cupcakes. The lemon & chocolate avocado were two of the favorites. Raspberry was a close 2nd to the chocolate avocado. We were absolutely thrilled at these gorgeous cupcakes and Gigi’s attentiveness to their perfection! I told Stacey that we will DEFINITELY be ordering MANY more cupcakes from Gigi’s and that our daughter’s first birthday cupcakes will come from them!

So Tampabay Vegans…if you need vegan cupcakes go see the WONDERFUL girls at Gigi’s. They have vegan cupcakes DOWN!