The Best Damn Cupcakes

Since I moved to Indy, I’ve been fascinated with the growing food truck culture here. I’d heard of the concept before, as it was pretty big in Chicago for the past few years; but I didn’t expect it to be this extensive in a smaller city like Indy. The Indy food truck scene ranges from Mexican fare (West Coast Tacos is my personal fave…EVERYONE who knows me knows this) to pizza to comfort foods to sweet treats, the latter being my new obsession.

I learned about Scout’s Treats on Twitter. I started following West Coast Tacos on the social media site after the first spicy-pork-filled tortilla I sunk my teeth into, and they began tweeting about other food trucks, including Scout’s. I started to see the little pink Scout’s truck in Broad Ripple on my way home from work, but never stopped. Well, after our savory Cajun meal last Saturday, Alyssa and I were in the mood for treats. So we scoped out the ladies at Scout’s – the best decision we’ve ever made.

We checked their website and saw that they delivered; but after calling, realized that was only for large orders. A dozen cupcakes would be a lot for two girls, although don’t doubt it could happen. The lady on the phone invited us to come straight to the bakery on 86th and Ditch since we seemed pretty interested in her delectables.

When we arrived at where we thought we were supposed to be, there wasn’t a bakery in sight. We drove around aimlessly, finally calling back again only to be directed to an unassuming restaurant at the end of the strip mall we were wondering around in, where a little brunette woman in a white apron was waving her arms at us from the sidewalk.

Apparently, the two women who run Scout’s Treats bake out of the kitchen of a cozy, sports-bar-ish grill in Nora. When we parked and made our way to the door, the little brunette, Lisa, was ecstatic to see us, hugging us like we were old girlfriends. She invited us inside, sat us down in the dimly lit dining room (“Sometimes it gets a little geriatric in here,” she joked) and chatted us up, answering all our curious inquiries about her business before treating us to some of her tasty concoctions.

Lisa disappeared into the back of the restaurant to whip up something special for us after we had so specifically sought out Scout’s, emerging with two plated cupcakes. The giant sweets a la mode (that means with ice cream…I don’t know what you know) were a spin on a Toll House cookie but in cupcake form, topped with ganache and vanilla cream cheese. The only way I can describe the desserts is “to-die-for.” The outside was cookie-like, but the inside was warm, moist and cakey. The ganache and cream cheese topping is what really did it for me.

The best part, though, was how excited and friendly Lisa and her partner in baking crime, Stephanie, were. They told us about themselves, asked about us, took pictures (like the one I had Stephanie snap for me below) and Tweeted about us — their new groupies. They took a significant amount of time out of their night (it was already after 9), during which they should have been preparing for a big event they had the next day, to engage their two newest customers with almost celebrity treatment. These ladies were sweeter than their cupcakes, a great marketing move on their part.

For someone who is becoming a food and food truck fanatic like me, this was a super interesting way to spend my Saturday night. Listening to Lisa talk about how she thought up the company (she started out in the corporate world but got sick of it and decided to pursue this little idea and have some fun), finding out she was friends with the CEO of the company I work for, getting the inside scoop on a new cupcake event idea she had and having her ask for our honest opinion on it, and seeing the sincere interest she had in what we thought of her cupcakes made me feel like I was getting a unique glimpse of the Indy food scene and inspired me to dig for more.

Like I needed another reason to write about food.