Taking the NY Cupcake: Fall, 2008

I have seen many blogging foodies who use the tag line above: "Life is short, Eat Dessert First! - Jacques Torres". The NYC food culture certainly agrees with this statement.

Today I bring you my official Cupcake tour of NYC! First, I must start with a tip…never plan a cupcake tour all in one day. I experienced many of the best cupcake places in NYC. However, I failed to anticipate the richness involved in the consumption of these cupcakes. Within the restrictions of hours of operation, lines to get into the more popular bakeries, and the limits of my stomach, I visited & sampled five of the top cupcake venues in NYC.

Quick stipulation: my next trip to NY may be a continuation of this tour as I wasn’t able to visit some of my top planned destinations. Magnolia, being an extremely delicious & famous bakery (featured in Sex & the City), had an hour line…so we decided to skip it on the tour in exchange for more venues in the time we had. Chikalicious was not opened when we were in the area, so we had to pass here as well. I also received great reviews from Buttercup Bake Shop and Two Little Red hens. If you’ve been to any of these places and have a review, please leave a comment with your thoughts.

The following describes where I visited and what I loved.

But first, allow me to introduce my cupcake tasting team! My good friend Kristen from college & my awesome sister, Sarah, helped me to taste & rate our cupcake destinations. A special thanks to these lovely ladies.

#1: Sugar Sweet Sunshine: 126 Rivington Street


Being our first location, we chose to try Sugar Sweet Sunshine’s most popular & traditional cupcake; The “Sunshine Cupcake”: a classic vanilla cupcake with pink butter cream frosting.

The Display Case at Sugar Sweet Sunshine

This cupcake is very rich. One cupcake is very filling & satisfying for anyone’s sweet tooth. I personally am not the hugest fan of butter cream icing, due to it’s rich flavor. However, theirs was rather delicious. The cake was light and fluffy with the perfect amount of vanilla flavoring. One of my top choices of the day in terms of the cake quality, for sure.

#2: Billy’s Bakery: 184 9th Avenue


For the second destination on our tour, we chose a chocolate cupcake with vanilla butter cream frosting. One thing I learned on this tour was the more specialized & chic the bakery, the richer the butter cream frosting.

Display Case at Billy's

The butter cream was very light; not too rich. I enjoyed this frosting much more than that of Sugar Sweet Sunshine. The cake, however, was not nearly as good as the cake from Sugar Sweet Sunshine. It was pretty dry & not very flavorful.

We had a good time though...


#3: Amy’s Bread: 672 9th Ave


Next we ventured to Amy’s Bread. At this point, my sister had joined us, which gave us the opportunity to try two flavors of cupcake at each venue. Here we sampled their Red Velvet cupcake and their Devils Food cupcake with chocolate silk frosting. Amy's was my personal favorite of the day, the Red Velvet cupcake being my #1 cupcake.

Display Case at Amy's (The chocolate iced one and the back right cupcake with the red heart were those that we sampled)

The Red Velvet cupcake was perfect. The cake had the perfect combination of sweetness & moisture. The frosting tasted like fresh whipped cream even though it was butter cream. The Devils Food cupcake was good as well. The cake portion was great – again, perfect level of moisture & sweetness. The frosting was extremely thick. You will definitely crave a big glass of milk with this cupcake. It’s worth it, though!

#4: Tonnies: 120 West 3rd Street


Tonnies boasts an amazing variety of unique cupcakes. Most exciting, though, was the availability of miniature cupcakes. Perfect to manage any sweet tooth without over doing the richness. Here we tried their Golden Heart cupcake & their Old Fashioned Cupcake.


The Golden Heart was red velvet inside yellow cake with a cream cheese frosting. The cake was awesome. The frosting was too rich for me, but Sarah loved it (she is the real Red Velvet connoisseur). The Old Fashioned was yellow cake with a tie die colored frosting. Though it was only butter cream, the frosting had a bit of a fruity flavor to it – very unique but delicious!

#5: Crumbs: There are several locations of Crumbs in NY. One is on 321 Amsterdam Ave.


Though we didn’t initially intend to only visit five places, Crumbs ended up being our last stop as we were completely full of sugar at this point. Even though Crumbs was not my favorite in terms of quality of cake & frosting, it definitely deserves the prize for most diverse & creative selection of cupcakes. I have to say that it is very delicious & should be a stop during anyone's trip to NYC. This place gave me a million amazing ideas for cupcakes!


We tried their current special, limited time cupcake: The Sex and the City Cosmopolitan Cupcake. A pink vanilla cake with lime raspberry butter cream and pink sugar sprinkles, this was the most unique taste of the day. It was very sweet, but sure to be a crowd pleaser; especially if you hadn’t already sampled from four other cupcake places! Though this was not my favorite, it was definitely very good. I have had several of their cupcakes in the past. My favorite is definitely the cookies and cream cupcake (with the 1/2 Oreo on the top!)


Crumbs is a chain & can be found in a variety of places around the city – definitely check it out. We grabbed a sample tray for their cupcakes (miniature; see below) for our dinner party later that night. It’s a great favor to bring to a girls night or an intimate dinner party.

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Some Take-Aways for You:

My favorite cupcake of the day was the Red Velvet Cupcake purchased at Amy’s Bakery. It was the perfect combination of delicious cake and light, amazing frosting.

Biggest tip I have for any of you who would like to take a similar adventure: spread it out over a few days. The massive amount of sugar you ingest during this type of tour does not lend itself to tasting multiple cup cakes. I’m still quite full from all of my cupcake sampling.

Also, be prepared: the average price per cupcake that we paid was about $2.50. It is worth trying any of these places, but they do tend to be expensive for a cup cake. I recommend buying them for special occasions, a special day out with a friend or significant other, or congratulation for a friend or yourself for a promotion at work.

Let me know what you think, if you’ve tried these places, and which were your favorite! I plan to use many of the decorations I picked up along the way in my future baking adventures.