Perfume Review - OHWTO's Apple Spice Cake

By Unknown

Purchased

OHWTO's Apple Spice Cake

Depending on where you live, it might be getting pretty cold this time of year. You also may or may not be gearing up for a holiday or two that involves copious amounts of food and family. If this applies to you, I hope you can understand that I've had apples on the brain for the past couple of weeks (and if it doesn't apply to you, apples are still marvelous so it's a win-win, right?) - all I want to do is eat, cook, and bake apples.

I felt like I had to preface this post with my apple disclaimer because the fragrance I want to talk about is from a 4th of July release, and it is definitely not the 4th of July anymore. I guess this is already kind of an American-centric post (American holidays and all), but there's always time for apples.

Apple Spice Cake
OHWTO's Limited Edition 4th of July 2013 Release

What's more American than apple pie? Apple spice cake! Well, maybe not but hey! Slices of red delicious and granny smith apples sammiched between layers of buttery spiced yellow cake!

Mmm, sounds delicious, doesn't it? This was a limited edition fragrance, only available for 24 hours on the 4th of July. A very small number of bottles were made based on the demand (so I assume no extras!), my bottle is #14 out of 20 total. Rare and exciting!

But... decidedly not an Independence Day fragrance, and certainly not a hot, summer fragrance. When this showed up in my mailbox, I was tromping around in sundresses and flipflops, so warm, fluffy apple spice cake was not something that was at the forefront of my mind in the least.  Now that it's colder and I'm prepping for Thanksgiving and Christmas it's definitely time for OHWTO's Apple Spice Cake to shine!

The last apple fragrance I sampled from OHWTO was The Girl Who Waited, which was such an appley-apple that it was almost TOO appley. It also had a nice, subtle-almost-smoky-but-not leather note going on, and something that seemed like dirt. Very, very nice.

While The Girl Who Waited is the warm early-autumn day out picking apples and stuffing them into a burlap sack while gallivanting around barefoot, Apple Spice Cake is the yummy, yummy aftermath. A cold sniff from the bottle gives you a blend of yellow fluffy cake and juicy apples. The cakey part is the first to go after application. On my skin it flittered off into the atmosphere after only 15 minutes or so. The apples are are the same as TGWW - super juicy and almost too apple-like. Unlike TGWW though, the apple notes here don't linger for as long and recede after maybe 45 minutes.

What happens next is delicious. Brown sugar and cinnamon nudge to the forefront (but graciously allow the apple to stick around in the background) - this is the crumbly, nearly-crunchy outer crust of the spice cake. If you are not into the foodie, gourmand-style fragrances, this might not sound too appealing, but what I personally love about Apple Spice Cake is that it's NOT an overly-foodie fragrance one bit. After an hour or two of wearing, the "cake" part becomes more of a suggestion and not a statement. What's left behind is a soft, sweet-but-maybe-spicy blend.

Duration: My experience with OHWTO fragrances is that while they do hold their own, they're not quite as robust as some Haus of Gloi or Solstice Scents fragrances (SS in particular tends to churn out some real powerhouse perfumes as far as duration is concerned). Nonetheless, I applied some on my wrists at 7AM and by lunchtime what was left was pretty faint but still detectable. This is something I can see reapplying if possible, but given that it's a limited edition fragrance and can't be found in any portable sizes, that's not too likely since I'm not gonna shove a full-size bottle in my purse.

Score: 4/5
If this lasted just a little longer, it'd be a solid 5/5 for me. It's such a pleasant blend of fruity, foodie, and spicy sweetness. I'm not big on food fragrances, so I had no qualms with the cake top notes floating off so quickly, and while the apples evaporated faster than TGWW, they are never truly gone and are nicely complimented by the spicy sweetness that dominates the majority of the time. Here's hoping OHWTO brings it back for next July!