Cupcakes New York City style

The cupcake craze began in New York I think and I read about Magnolia Bakery in my IDEO Eyes Open New York book that I bought mainly for the gorgeous photography. I didn’t make it there my first trip so it was on my priority list of to do’s the second trip, and I made it to both the West Village and Rockefeller branches. Of course, four cupcakes in 4 days was really too much for me so I shared.

Firstly, I have to say choosing only four cupcakes from dozens of different flavours is really hard, especially when (a) you’re alone and don’t have a friend to talk about the merits of one over the other, (b) you only have a finite amount of stomach space over 4 days and (c) the cupcakes are perishable and you should realistically only keep ‘em for 2 days and don’t have the luxury of time to keep going back every day for a new cupcake.

Then there’s also merchandise and I so really wanted a Magnoloa I [cupcake] NY tee-shirt. Or something.

The Magnolia cupcakes were good, but not absolutely great.

And then one day, I chanced upon… BabyCakes (248 Broome Street, between Orchard & Ludlow, NY 10002).

Until a tweet from a friend, I hadn’t even heard about BabyCakes. Vegan bakery? I didn’t know the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian. But since she mentioned, and since we were there, I had to go in.

The interior is kitschy, it looks like a home-run bakery. There is so much to take in and there’s so much happening.

I love, in particular, how the signages are hang drawn, even the “we accept these forms of payment” sign. I love that they discount day old goodies.

And I love my red velvet. This has got to be the yummiest red velvet I’ve ever had. Who’d think it’s vegan? It was so good that as soon as I got back to London, all I wanted was the BabyCakes cook book, which I have now, but have not made anything from yet because I haven’t read to understand the way vegan/gluten-free baking works.

The cupcake craze spread to London but I think that London tends to put a little too much icing sugar in the buttercream frosting. (In Singapore, that’d have to be the case too else it would just melt in the heat!) Singaporean bakers are also going cupcake crazy. I’d be really happy to buy a cupcake every once in a while (from BabyCakes) when the craving hit because baking (and eating) a lot of cupcakes would mean eating a lot of calories! :)