LWF&D makes cupcakes

Last week I made cupcakes. I was trying to replicate the Amy's Bread black-and-white cupcakes without buying the Amy's Bread cookbook (which does have the recipe in it, but I'm cheap). I've read the recipe before and I know it has sour cream, so I searched for another chocolate cupcake recipe with sour cream in it. This is the one I ended up using, from a cupcake cookbook AV gave me (awww). I used the Magnolia buttercream recipe, which is the standard butter-vanilla-milk-confectioner's sugar concoction. Phew, that's a lot of links in one paragraph!

So how'd they turn out? They were good, but not what I was going for. The cake was SUPER light and fluffy, chocolatey but not rich and fudgy, as we all know Amy's is. In fact, it was so light and delicate that the muffin-top-like-overhang had a hard time staying attached to the stump, and the whole thing struggled to support the weight of the frosting. The frosting itself came out a touch too runny to hold my delightfully skilled piping designs (sarcasm, sarcasm, sarcasm)... I found out that the Amy's recipe has some fondant in it, which is what helps it keep its stiff shape. (Careful.)

Like little presents

See? No fudginess inside

Regardless, these tasted quite good: sweet and chocolatey and bad for you. After dinner I ate a large one and then licked the frosting bowl and then almost puked, like a little kid who ate too much halloween candy. Despite my own indiscretions, however, I consider this particular baking experiment a semi-success. Next time I may just have to buy the Amy's cookbook and try out the real thing.

Amy's Bread chocolate cake

New Year's Eve was the birthday of AV's friend PP, and as we were all celebrating the holiday together, AV and I conspired to get him a celebratory surprise birthday cake. What's a birthday without a cake, eh? Right. Since I didn't think I'd have enough time to make it all the way down to Billy's early in the day, I ordered a cake from Amy's Bread. Since I'm such a fan of their black-and-white cupcakes, I went with a chocolate cake with white buttercream, in a 6-inch two-layer size.

Birthdayyyy!!

Damn, this cake was good. Seriously good. The tiny bit of brownie-like denseness that makes their black-and-white cupcake so decadent had morphed into an honest-to-goodness underdone center, which meant the tip of every slice was like straight brownie batter. AV agreed that the cake was "fudgy and thoroughly delicious," and the buttercream was Amy's signature delicious vanilla confection. I could eat this cake every day of my life.

Ohghhghhghhghhh

Happy birthday, PP!

Amy's Bread
672 Ninth Avenue, between 46th and 47th Streets
212-977-2670

Back to basics at Amy's Bread

It's been a tough few weeks for the cupcake eater in me. First I tried to squelch the craving with a non-cupcake pastry from Andre's. Then I gave in to the siren song that is Crumbs. Where's a Billy's red velvet or banana cupcake when you need one? Down in Chelsea and Tribeca, sadly. So when the craving returned last week, once again I turned to a local option: Amy's Bread.

Now, while my heart certainly lies with Billy's, I won't pretend I was unhappy "settling" for Amy's. I wrote about the black and white cupcake at Amy's a while back, and when I get a local craving for a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting, it still can't be topped. They've changed the wrappers to French cupcake liners since I last wrote, making the quarry look a little something like this:

The frosting got squished in transit. But still good!

When you pull the paper off the cupcake, it falls away in a neat halo, not unlike this dinosaur from Jurassic Park.

I realize this picture doesn't look much different from the one above it. But trust me, the cupcake liner mechanism works well.

And then when you cut into the cupcake, it reveals its true magic: A moist, fine-crumbed, intensely chocolatey cake that neatly straddles the line between cake and brownie. The center is always a tiny bit underdone, aptly delivering that fudgy-brownie hit, while the base of the cupcake brings the cake. Oh, and the frosting is perfect, sugary and mild, a classic foil for the rich cake.

You can see the moisture throughout and the layer of fudginess right below the frosting

While the other cupcakes at Amy's can't hold a candle to the goodies at Billy's, their black and white cupcake is tops. My unequivocal recommendation remains.

Amy's Bread, the vanilla version

Since it was my birthday earlier in the week (not sure if you knew), the other day my lovely coworker and former boss M brought me an assortment of cupcakes from Amy's Bread (thank you M!). HowEVER did she know I liked cupcakes? I couldn't wait to get these home and dig in.

So many goodies inside...

The assortment included two chocolate with vanilla frosting, two red velvet, one vanilla with pink frosting, and one vanilla with chocolate frosting. I loooove their chocolate with vanilla frosting, but since I've already recorded my love affair with that cupcake on this blog, I decided to go for their vanilla with pink frosting for the sake of my readers. Out of the box it came.

Such diversity

It was a really beautiful cupcake, with defined frosting swirls and a demure sprinkling of colorful decorations. I had put these cupcakes in the fridge (bad, bad me... I know you're not supposed to do that... but if I had left them out they would just have melted into a butter-and-sugar puddle in this extreme heat), so there was definitely a chill on them, but I didn't want to wait for a suitable thaw, so I dug right in.

Prim and pretty.

As usual, I cut this baby in half and tucked into the cake first. The one way I can describe Amy's Bread vanilla cake is: pound cake. This was pound cake, pure and simple. It was so buttery, I think I heard my arteries whimper just a little bit. The cake was cold so the butter was firm and the cake was incredibly dense. There was a tiny bit of vanilla flavor, but truthfully, the overwhelming and dominating flavor of this cupcake was BUTTER.

The cross-section

Close up on cake texture... see the layer of compressed butter cake under the frosting

The frosting was delicious, of course, and there was a lot of it. I should have waited for it to thaw a little bit, because it definitely had an overriding buttery mouthfeel rather than that ideal satiny frosting touch. But nonetheless, it had a great sugary flavor and that exterior crackle that makes Amy's frosting to likeable.

Nice frosting-to-cake ratio

Overall, this was a solid cupcake. It wasn't as good as Amy's chocolate cake with vanilla icing, which is a contender for best cupcake in Manhattan. But if you like vanilla cake, and especially if you like pound cake (or just the flavor of butter), you'll like this cupcake. Stop by Amy's, and once you've tried the black and white cupcake, give this one a shot.

Oh Amy, I came and you sold me a cupcake

Today was a cupcake day. Haven't had one in a while, got the craving after dinner at work, and stopped at my go-to cupcake place, Amy's Bread, on my way home. Ohhh yes.

I went for their black and white cupcake, a chocoalte cake with white buttercream frosting. You can't go wrong. My cupcake journey follows:

Oh, the anticipation

They package the cupcake upside down in a paper cup...

...which means it only gets a LITTLE squished on the way home.

I eat my cupcakes with a fork and knife, and I start by peeling a bit of the paper and cutting a small half. That way you can get at the chocolatey interior.

The cake is tender and light, with the fluffiest crumb imaginable

But near the top of the cake, right under the frosting, is just a couple of bites' worth of intense, extra-moist, slightly undercooked brownie-like cake. It's such a wonderful surprise.

And the frosting-- oh man, the frosting. It's perfect. Sweet, with just the barest external crunch indicating the right ratio of sugar to butter. A great vanilla flavor is just the icing on the icing.

I savored every bit of this cupcake. If you're anywhere near any of Amy's locations, I urge you to pick up a black and white cupcake and slowly--deliberately--enjoy every crumb.