I got the tweet just after 1 pm: Sprinkles mobile was parked in Dupont! 250 free cupcakes on a first come first serve basis were mine for the taking. The last of my dignity went out the window as I laced on my running shoes and dashed out the door headed for 20th and Mass. Two minutes later I was there. The Sprinkles cupcake truck was not. Confused I checked the tweet and kept jogging the area. Not one person holding a cupcake, eating a cupcake, or with that dopey look of cupcake bliss on their faces.
Something was rotten in the state of Sprinkles.
I found an empty truck on Connecticut Avenue and thirteen angry women grumbling about deadlines and lunch breaks but still no cupcakes in site. I made small talk about a woman’s cute (read: outdated) ballet flats and received a tweet that Sprinkles had sold out for the day in 12 minutes. How remains a mystery to me. I seriously have considered that they may not have been any cupcakes given out today at all.
Twitter stalking tells me one person got a cupcake, that there was a huge line of girls outside an office building, about twenty disgruntled people on Mass and 20th but the vast majority are accusatory tweeps calling Sprinkles liars and wondering HOW they managed to sell out, while none of us could find them. In the last two hours it has already developed the name Sprinklegate.
The Sprinkles boutique cupcakery opens tomorrow in Georgetown and supposedly there will be free cupcakes in Chinatown Thursday, Capitol Hill Friday, Friendship Heights Saturday and Easter Market Sunday. Before you get your hopes up learn from Dupont: arrive early, have runners on all street corners in the entire area, and most assuredly, do not go to the intersection Sprinkles given on twitter. Best of luck and happy free cupcake hunting DC.
Jana Erwin is the primary chef and writer of CherryTeaCakes.com, a non-profit venture combining the love of fine desserts and feeding the impoverished in Washington, DC. You can follow her posts on twitter: @cherryteacakes.
