PB&J for dessert

You know when you have things that are so disgusting, they’re good? I don’t think it’s so much a guilty pleasure as that inexplicable rubbernecking-at-an-accident compulsion. I had that today. In the form of a cupcake.

I went to Hill Country, a big barbecue joint with self-service meat and trimmings stations (I know, so not my style, but it’s for an article). It just so happened that I seated myself near the dessert station, where they had these great, big trays of homemade cupcakes.

The place definitely gets points for presentation: the giant cupcakes are decorated really prettily, the peanut butter and jelly one being topped with fluffy caramel-colored frosting and orange and brown Reese’s Pieces. Who can resist? Apparently not me, even after putting down a slab of barbecued meat.


The PB&J cupcake has peanut butter frosting and a jelly center, which brings me back to the disgusting-but-good part: There was so much jelly — grape Welch’s type jelly — that it was soaking through the bottom. I had to eat it with a fork. The frosting was a lighter, sweeter version of straight peanut butter. There was not much cake to the cupcake. It was like eating a sugared-up version my childhood lunch sandwich, except with a fork. And for dessert. Disgusting. But good.

Hill Country
30 West 26th between Broadway & Sixth
212.255.4544