Cupcake Royale employee Samantha Pease serves up the 'cupcake of the month': strawberry 66, with 66% local ingredients. Photo by Angelo Carosio

The sweet toothed residents of Capitol Hill will have yet another temptation starting Wednesday when “Seattle’s best cupcake” winner Cupcake Royale opens the doors to a new café at 11th and Pike.

In celebration of the opening the bakery is giving away a free mini “strawberry 66″ cupcake to anyone who comes by and simply says a phrase.

“We’re giving away our cupcake of the month for free [Wednesday],” said Carolyn Sueno, the PR manager for the opening. “All you have to do is come in and say ‘legalize frostitution!’ You won’t get one if you don’t.”

Chocolate batter is scooped into a baking tray in the new "state of the art" Cupcake Royale bakery. Photo by Angelo Carosio

The new Capitol Hill Cupcake Royale location is pink, shiny and has a beautiful stained glass cupcake that greets visitors as they walk in the door. The shop serves all kinds of cupcakes, from classic frosted vanilla and chocolate to more adventurous flavors like mint, lavender and lemon drop.  Vérité coffee is also available.

In addition to the new store, the bakery has recently revamped their cupcake recipe to be, according to promotional material, “more moisty-er!” Pastry chef Sue McCown has overseen the process of perfecting the new recipe, and she definitely thinks that the new cupcakes are an improvement.

“It’s yummy!” McCown said in an interview with Eat All About It. “If I may say so myself.”

The baking perfectionist made hundreds of batches of cupcakes in recent months, helping Royale owner Jody Hall in her mission to create a moister, more delicious cupcake. Eat All About It  gave an inside preview of the baking process in a recent post:

McCown kept careful field notes on the results of changing the recipe’s leavening by a fraction, or substituting dried buttermilk for fresh, or altering the order in which ingredients were mixed. Struggling with one crumbly impasse, she would wake up in the middle of the night, debating what to try next. Her landlord, hearing this, told her “It’s just a cupcake!”

“No,” she said. “It’s not just a cupcake. It’s a really good cupcake.”

Is it actually more than just a cupcake? My strawberry cupcake was indeed more moist than the Cupcake Royale that I’m used to, and it feels richer and more satisfying. I’ve always thought that the frosting was a little too much, but the amount seems to fit better with the new recipe. Overall, I’m impressed, and only time will tell if this new recipe is indeed better at keeping overnight than the old one was (shelf life is one of the main reasons the recipe was tweaked).

Try the new recipe and check out the new store for yourself Wednesday.