When I found out we were going on a business trip to Washington DC - I knew that being so close, I had to get to New York and visit some of the world famous cupcake stores I had heard so much about.
There was no doubt that I HAD to get to Magnolia, the thing I didn't realise at the time was that there were at least 3 that I knew of scattered around the city. So when I started to investigate the various cupcake stores, I decided to visit the Magnolia bakery closest to at least one other cupcake store. I managed to find one within walking distance to 2 other cupcake stores. On our first day of arrival we got into New York on Manhattan island at 9.30am, this was unfortunately too early to check in. So with nothing but time up our sleeve, we decided to knock off a few of our MUST DO's.
We located a few stores and checked out Dylan's candy Bar, along with the Hershey's chocolate store and M&M's world right next to times square, thus also knocking off Times Square from our list. We visited the world famous Toy's R Us in times square with 3 giant levels and a MASSIVE Ferris Wheel INSIDE the store, which was so much fun! Then we headed for Bloomingdale's and in the store stumbled upon our first cupcakery of our visit. And what better one to start the tour with, but Magnolia Bakery.
The store was only a small one but it was full of character and so very cute.
The staff were amazing and really quite lovely. After the tough decision Steve decided on the Red Velvet and I went with a Sno-Cap (which was devils food chocolate cake and a luscious meringue frosting.) It was delicious and definitely met our expectations. Honestly, it was a great way to start our cupcake tour as it got us off on the right foot and gave us a good base to make opinions on future cupcakery's.
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| Sno-Cap |
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| Red Velvet |
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Steve and I ate half of our chosen cupcakes first, then swapped so we could try both the cakes. We agreed that the particular flavours we each chose were our favorites so quickly swapped back. I had the Sno-Cap and the meringue frosting was AHHHHMAZING! I cant wait to get back home and try to make my own version of this cake - absolutely deeee-lish!!!
Next we set off for Sprinkles. I knew that this would definitely rank high on my list as I have done so much reading about this cupcakery. Especially after Sprinkles recently made the news with their new "ATM" style cupcake purchasing system located in Beverly Hills - the first of its kind in the world.
I really loved the concept they use to identify which flavours were what. See the dots on the front of the building, well that's their flavouring system. Depending on what flavour you choose, there is a corresponding coloured dot combination that identifies that flavour to the staff. It is an ingenious system which they display on their menu board and makes it quicker and easier to identify if they have that flavour in stock through the window.
So again sticking to our "no more then 1 cupcake each, per cupcakery", I chose lemon and Steve surprisingly chose the salted caramel (which is normally my pick). Honestly though, after our cupcake at Magnolia, I wasn't really in the mood to eat my cupcake straight away, and neither was Steve. So we opted to take-away and eat them later on. Little did we realise that would be 3 days later - and still, they rated as one of our top picks! The only thing that really disappointed us, was the lack of variety of cupcake flavours available on that particular day. They do, however, rotate which flavours are available, based on the day of the week - like a roster system.
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| Lemon |
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| Salty Caramel |
(Keep in mind that we tasted these 3 days after we bought them!!) The lemon was very fresh and zesty. The cake was moist and tasteful, and the frosting was delicately soft and very more-ish. The salty caramel was a surprise to both myself and Steve. They had lightly dusted the top of the frosting with small pieces of sea salt, which really made the frosting pop. The cake, again, was soft, moist, fluffy and just begging to be eaten. The funniest part about these cupcakes, is we had eaten so many sweets in the days prior that we decided all cupcakes waiting for us in the room would get the opportunity they deserved to be tested and rated, even if it meant only having a bite and throwing the rest away.These cupcakes were so good I couldn't stand to see them thrown away, and instead sacrificed myself to eat as much of the cupcakes as I could. I felt extremely sick afterwards, but I tell you what, it was sooooo worth it!
Finally, we made our way to Crumbs bake shop, our third and final cupcakery for day one. I honestly think out of the 3 cupcake stores we visited on the day, this one had the biggest range of cupcakes. The sizes of the cupcakes were also significantly bigger, so if you like more cake for your dollar, this is the cupcakery for you. Again there were multiple shops in the city, however we opted to go to the one just down the road from the previous two visited.
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| Inside Crumbs... the goodies cabinet!!! |
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| Need coffee??? ;) |
We chose to "take-away" these ones again as we were really feeling the affects from the first cupcakes and also starting to feel the affects of jet lag kicking in, we needed to get back to our room and rest up ready for the nights adventures. I chose the Coffee Toffee, while Steve chose the Apple Cobbler. We didn't get to try these ones till the following night, and even then only managed to eat half of the Coffee Toffee which was insanely good but super rich. It had a fluffy cake that rated nothing special in my books, but had this coffee flavoured cream centre with a toffee frosting finished with toffee pieces. It was a really lovely mix of flavours. Unfortunately we never got around to eating the Apple Cobbler - but it still looked delicious.
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| Coffee Toffee |
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| Apple Cobbler |
So after day one, and trying the cupcakes we did, we both agreed that Sprinkles was our favorite. However at this stage, we still had about 7 more stores to visit.... so stay tuned for part two of our New York & Washington DC cupcake adventure!
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