Taking Care of Business Part 1

After 2 weeks of non-stop travel, my first week back home in Paris has been pretty busy. I had an amazing time in my hometown of New York. It was nice to visit with some old friends and satisfy my cravings for some of my favorite foods like pizza, chinese, burgers and cupcakes! But it wasn't all vacation; I did work on some very fun projects while I was there......

A few weeks before I left for New York an old friend from pastry school called to ask if I would be interested in creating a cupcake with him for a new restaurant he's opening later this year in Manhattan. Would I? You bet! I answered.

24 hours before we were to meet, Tomas called and briefly described to me the restaurant concept. He spoke about some of the dishes and desserts they would be serving and asked me to focus on the color white (this fits in with the overall restaurant theme but I don't want to divulge too much so let's leave it at that). I met up with Tomas at a friend's restaurant bearing several bags of different ingredients I thought would come in handy. Since their cuisine is to be primarily fusion with a nod to Tomas' homeland of Thailand, I had something sweet and spicy in mind. For some reason I could not get the image of white-blond rocker Billy Idol out of my head and his song Hot in the City. Tomas wanted something different but easy enough to recreate at any time of year, something traditional with a unique twist. I love cupcake tastings and assembling all the various options of a new flavor combo. In total, we tried 6 different cupcakes, each had between 4-7 different iterations and unanimously settled on a winner. Keeping with the white theme, we concocted a coconut cupcake with a white pepper-macadamia nut-cocount cream filling and a white chocolate ganache mohawk frosting. Tomas of course has my permission to modify the cupcake as he and his partners see fit. I wish them lots of luck and patience over the months to come as they secure their funding and get ready for the big opening. I'm tickled pink to have been invited to work with them and look forward to our cupcake's NY debut!



I also had the opportunity to spend a day with Elisa Strauss, the founder of Confetti Cakes, to learn the art of gumpaste flowers. All I can say is that I had an amazing time - I love Elisa! She is a patient and enthusiastic teacher, clealy dedicated to her craft and is so very talented at what she does. Her cake studio is decorated with cake dummies from her books and they are just as incredible in real life as on the printed page. In 5 hours, we were able to cover a number of different flowers and I can't wait to try them for myself at home. I would highly recommend taking a class with Elisa to anyone in the area or further afield. A huge thank you to Elisa for taking me under her wing as a student for the day - I look forward to seeing you again (maybe one day in Paris?) and taking another class in the future.



One of the things I loved most about my visit to the US was the TV programming -- Cupcake Wars, Amazing Wedding Cakes, Last Cake Standing, etc., I could not get enough! Even my kids were hooked. I was so impressed by the skills of all these bakers and the unbelievable flavor combinations and structures they assembled in such a short period of time - 1000 cupcakes in 3 filled varieties with hand-made decorations in 2 hours! You have got to be kidding me! I still don't know how they managed to pull that one off. So, when my best friend's husband "challenged" me to take on Crumbs in a red velvet taste-off, I could not say no. Red velvet is one of my favorite cupcake varieties and I think I make a pretty darn good one. Thankfully, this request came in before I left Paris, so I traveled with a sachet of pre-assembled dry ingredients to NY.



Finding the equivalent of the butter, buttermilk, oil, etc. that I use was a challenge enough in a NYC supermarket (and wow was it expensive!) as was baking in my friend's apartment. You know that joke "My wife makes dinner every night...her favorite thing to make? Reservations!" Well, that sums up my friend perfectly. So when it dawned on me that I hadn't thought to bring vanilla beans for the frosting, I had to make due with the only thing I could find in her cabinets -- French Vanilla flavored Splenda! The horror! I wasn't present for the taste-off but my friend later told me her hubby and his family were "raving about my cupcakes" so I'll take that as a thumbs up. :)

As I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, we did a lot of eating while in NYC and I'd love to share some of my favorite addresses with you (especially for cupcakes)! This post is aready getting long so I'll fill you in next time about where we ate and the new cupcakeries we explored......

Crumbs Red Velvet photo courtesy of tambbr.blogspot.com

Hot Child (& Cupcakes) in the City

Just back in from the US and trying to cope with the jet lag that had us all up at 1 AM this morning! Boy, did the summer go fast or what? Our trip to New York passed by in a New York minute and I was very sorry to leave. Despite my best intentions, I didn't get to even a fraction of the stuff I had planned so hopefully I'll have another good excuse to get back to my hometown sometime soon.

As those of you who follow my blog know, I was in Manhattan to see my best friend get married and what a wedding it was! Between the bachelorette's at Lips, a drag revue in the West Village (here's a pic of the fabulous "Joan Rivers"); the rehearsal dinner at an old-school Italian in midtown East; and the wedding itself at the Harvard Club, I spent the better part of my free time wining and dining my way across the city.



I did manage to get a little shopping in at NY Cake & Baking Supplies in Chelsea, and visit a handful of the local cupcakeries I have been reading about for the past few years on my favorite blog: Cupcakes Take the Cake.



Of the 5 cupcakeries I personally sampled (4 in NYC, and 1 in NJ that was too horrific to even name here), hands-down Two Little Red Hens on the Upper East Side was my favorite. The best cupcake? The Brooklyn Blackout which is a moist Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Pudding at its center and a rich fudgy frosting. (IMHO, any of their cupcakes which has this fudge frosting is spot-on). I also tried their Red Velvet (which was my second favorite NY cupcake) - the cream cheese frosting was dense yet light and tasted like cheesecake. The cake itself was moist and a vibrant red but not nuclear red and complemented the cupcake unlike so many other RVs that just serve as a vehicle for the frosting.



I also sampled their Marble cupcake (marble Chocolate/Vanilla cupcake with Chocolate/Vanilla twist icing) and two of their American Classics: Vanilla cake with Vanilla Buttercream and Chocolate cake with Vanilla Buttercream. All were very, very good and I ended up buying cupcakes from them 3 times! The boutique itself is charming in a rustic decor and inviting. While the wait was a bit long each time we were there, there are lots of beautiful cakes and decorating supplies to look at. Two Little Red Hens is definitely the cupcakery I'll be stopping in the next time I'm in town.



Next on my list was the CupcakeStop Truck which I happily stumbled upon one day while down in the Flatiron District (truck pic courtesy of www.examiner.com). There was no line to get a cupcake though I hear that they do a pretty brisk business. Just after I ordered my Red Velvet and Carrot Cake cupcakes, a woman wandered over, said something very discreetly to the counterperson and walked away with a mini cupcake. I, of course, chased her down the street to find out that by mentioning "joonbug" the first 500 customers were entitled to a free mini of their choosing. I ran back and went with a Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl mini. I liked the cake of this one very much - it was rich and chocolatey, but the frosting was a tad overly sweet and peanut buttery for my tastes.



The Carrot Cake was moist and packed with shredded carrots. I didn't care for the Red Velvet at all, and there was so much red food coloring in it that when my daughter took a bite of it, the crumbs that fell on the floor stained the rug!

Crumbs Bake Shop has locations all over the city and unfortunately the day I went in, I was feeling a little too ill (read: hungover) to order anything. But their display cases were impressive with at least 25 different flavors on offer.



Their cupcakes are big and beautifully decorated. I would have liked to take a picture but they wouldn't let me; this one comes courtesy of www.daemonsfood.com. Several friends tell me that Crumbs is their favorite cupcakery in Manhattan and I'll be sure to sample them on my next trip.



On our last full day in Manhattan, my husband and I packed up the kids and made our way downtown to the High Line which is a newly opened above-ground park in the West Village. It's built on the abandoned old elevated train track and is a wonderful place to spend a sunny day. We meandered around our old neighborhood which has very few holdouts still in place from the original Meatpacking days. It's now mostly upscale shops and chi chi restaurants and clubs; things sure have changed a lot since our days there.



After a quick stop in the Ink Pad and a look-see at our old neighborhood standby, Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker, where you can see their twin mixers beating up some buttercream in the window, we headed over to the East Village to visit Butter Lane and Chikalicious Dessert Club.



Of the two, Butter Lane was my preferred cupcakery. Not only is it a really cute little shop with super friendly staff, but I liked their build-a-cupcake concept. The idea is so basic - you choose one of their about a dozen frosting flavors in either American or French versions (the American is standard confectioners' sugar and butter whereas the French contains eggs) to go on one of the several cake choices. I had read some customer reviews on Yelp before stopping down and so decided to go with a Vanilla cupcake with American Vanilla Buttercream and a Banana Cupcake with American Chocolate Buttercream.



I really liked the flavor combo of the banana and chocolate, and the vanilla/vanilla was simply delicious -- the vanilla buttercream was good and rich without being too sweet. My one complaint was that the cake of each was a little too dry and dense for my taste but it was Sunday and quiet in their shop, and maybe the cupcakes had been hanging out for a while.

I had read a lot about Chikalicous before my trip and had very high hopes for them. Sadly, they fell a bit short. While the store itself is quite drab and dingy, their cupcakes are beautiful to look at.



The frosting which has a somewhat mousse-y consistency tops each in a flawless shiny dome. Since they didn't have descriptions of each cupcake, I ended up ordering 3 filled varieties (which they call Premium) and I really would have liked to try one of their basic flavors; I didn't realize this mistake until I was back uptown and it was too late to get more. My problem with Chikalicious was that while various components of the cupcakes were delicious - the salted Caramel center of the Caramel cupcake, the chocolate mousse topping on the Triple Chocolate Cupcake, the Marshmallow Frosting on the S'more cupcake - and their cakes were moist and airy like I like them, the cupcakes in entirety didn't work for me.



The chocolate center of the Triple Chocolate was too dark and bitter and totally overwhelmed the cupcake. The cake of the S'mores cupcake was overly spicy and cinnamony - I think they were going for a Graham Cracker flavored cake and ended up with something more akin to a Carrot Cake spice profile which didn't work at all with the rest of the cupcake. And as for the Caramel, it was very sweet and too flavorful - I could barely get through my third of the cupcake. I'm not counting Chikalicious out as I really will go back and try a simpler variety the next time I'm in the Big Apple but I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with this round.



Lastly, I wanted to share a picture of some cupcakes I spied at E.A.T on Madison Avenue which were by far the most beautiful cupcakes I saw during my visit. I didn't try these but was told they are vanilla and chocolate with poured vanilla and chocolate glaze. Pretty, no?



And the fun ceramic cupcakes you decorate yourself at FAO Schwarz.

Well, that pretty much sums up my trip to some of New York's infamous cupcakeries. If you are in the NY area or have visited NY recently and want to share some thoughts on your favorite cupcakeries and/or places I should visit on my next trip to the Big Apple, do leave me a comment below. In the meantime, I'll be fooling around in my kitchen trying to come up with a home-made version of TLRH's Brooklyn Blackout cupcakes that are worthy of their namesake. Man, just thinking about them has me drooling!

Yours in Cupcake Love,
Little Miss Cupcake xx

Cupcake Addresses:
Two Little Red Hens, 1652 2nd Avenue (between 85th and 86th Streets)
Butter Lane, 123 East 7th Street (between 1st and Avenue A)
Chikalicious, 204 East 10th Street (between 2nd and 1st Avenues)
CupcakeStop Truck, various; follow them on twitter for locations @cupcakestop
Crumbs Bake Shop, various; I stopped in at 1371 Third Avenue (between 79th and 78th Streets)
E.A.T, 1064 Madison Avenue (between 80th and 79th Streets)
Magnolia Bakery, various; the original is at 401 Bleecker Street (on the corner of West 11th Street)