The Bryant Park is tasty in cupcake form

Lately, as I mentioned previously, my cravings have shifted away from the frozen treats realm more towards the pastry realm once again. It's a seasonal change, for sure, brought about by the lack of 100-degree temperatures that make ice cream almost a life-giving elixir rather than an optional indulgence. Maybe it's also due to the fact that I haven't been sleeping well. But I've gotten back on the cupcake train, and that train was making frequent stops at Crumbs.

This time, I was lured in by their cupcake of the week, the Bryant Park. A massive stump of chocolate cake, this confection is filled with chocolate mousse and frosted with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. There are white chocolate curls and chocolate cake crumbs to provide subtle and classy decoration. But how does it taste?

Camouflage cupcake

Delicious, in a completely overkill kind of way. Crumbs' chocolate cake is actually quite good; it's delicious, springy cake that's rich without being dense or greasy. Paired with the white chocolate cake, it's a classic chocolate-and-vanilla pairing. The chocolate mousse filling, a surprisingly hefty dollop in the center of the cake, is unnecessary, in my humble yet completely correct opinion. Granted, I'm generally not a fan of chocolate-on-chocolate desserts (I need the balance of vanilla or cream), but I scooped pretty much all of it out. I really liked the white chocolate shavings, though; in fact, the top section of this cupcake was a true delight.

Check out all that mousse!

Make no mistake: this is a gutbomb of the highest order. Don't even think about eating the whole thing yourself; even taking down half of this probably takes years off your life (delicious, delicious years). But when you need a cupcake, you need a cupcake. And the Bryant Park delivers.

Crumbs
Locations throughout Manhattan

A brief break from ice cream: Cupcakes!

The other day, for some reason I got the craving for a cupcake. Maybe it was that I was having a rough day; maybe it's that I hadn't had a cupcake in quite a while. Whatever the reason (his heart or his shoes... anyone?), I wanted a cupcake. And when Crumbs tweeted about its cupcake of the week, the "Big Apple," I was sold.

A quick midafternoon walk to the nearest Crumbs, and I had my treat for the day. After dinner, I cracked it open, and this is what I saw:

Electric!

It's the traditional (enormous) Crumbs size. I took it out of the packaging and thumped it on a plate, then, as is customary, cut it in half. Behold, the chocolate buttercream filling inside the vanilla cake:

Kinda almost looks like a real apple. Kinda.

The cake itself is moist, verging on greasy, and tastes just like boxed cake mix. The vanilla buttercream is whipped and exceedingly light-textured, with a bit of a shortening mouthfeel. The chocolate buttercream filling is almost an afterthought, since the chocolate flavor is so incredibly retiring. The pretzel stem is a nice touch, but the surprising star of this whole concoction is the blanket of red crystal sugar coating the frosting. It lends sweetness and needed texture to the otherwise soft and mushy affair.

As always happens with Crumbs, even though I didn't eat the whole thing, I felt slightly sick afterwards. But it's a satisfying kind of sick, that sick that proves you just ate something totally bad for you but totally yummy, like fried dough. Suffice it to say that it cured my cupcake craving for the time being.

Crumbs
Locations throughout the city and beyond

A birthday cupcake tableau

This year, for my birthday, I received two incredibly thoughtful cupcake deliveries. The first came late on my birthday evening, courtesy of my Dad: two Red Velvet monsters from Crumbs, packed sweetly in a little twin tin. I tucked in happily the next day.

Get your mind out of the gutter!

These were bright crimson cake bases, the traditional softball-sized Crumbs indulgences, slathered with cream cheese frosting and decorated with white sprinkles and more red cake crumbs. While the cake wasn't really moist at all (perhaps due to the fact that it was a day old by the time I ate it, so reserving judgment here), I give Crumbs major props for the fact that it actually tasted like chocolate. Most RV cupcakes these days only taste like food-colored vanilla cake, but there was definitely cocoa in this batter.

Ready to go

The frosting was also delicious-- not really that cream-cheesy, but smooth and decadent and really bad for you in that honest, straight-up way that frosting has. The sprinkles added a tiny bit of texture and not much else. I ate about 2/3 of this cupcake and felt pretty sick. And then I went and played wiffle ball. My team lost.

Really really red

When I returned that evening, I was greeted by cupcake delivery #2: A dozen Billy's Bakery gems, courtesy of my employers and the rest of our team in London! Oh man, what a treat. The following day, I had a banana cupcake, my favorite. It was the traditional real banana cake, tender and delicious, beautifully frosted with the signature Billy's cream cheese frosting that may be may favorite thing on God's green earth. Thank you, AY and DL and the rest of the team, for such a thoughtful gift-- nothing makes my day like a big bunch of Billy's.

So pretty!

Yum yum

Crumbs
Locations throughout Manhattan

Billy's Bakery
184 Ninth Avenue and 75 Franklin Street
212-647-9958

A baked-good nod to Passover

With Passover winding down, I felt it appropriate to celebrate by indulging in a special Passover cupcake from Crumbs. So to Crumbs I trekked, and after dinner, I unwrapped my quarry.

I had chosen a Raspberry Red Sea cupcake, since I'd read great reviews of it online. It's a regular Crumbs-sized cupcake (read: size and heft of a softball), with a nut cake base, raspberry vanilla cream cheese frosting, raspberry preserves filling, and a decoration of sliced almonds and "raspberry drizzle" (a.k.a. red gel).

The behemoth

Cross-section-- frosting smearage is hiding the preserves filling

The verdict? Actually quite good. The main attribute of the cake, like many flourless concoctions, was "crumbly." The thing pretty much fell apart in my hands. But if you're not expecting traditional Crumbs cake (spongy, bouncy, resilient), it's inoffensive, with a mildly sweet nutty flavor. There's too much of it, of course-- I lopped off the bottom half of the cake to no ill effect. The combination of the frosting and filling, however, was where the cupcake shined. The frosting was sweet without being cloying, and the raspberry preserves led needed moisture to the cake. I personally felt there were too many almonds on top, and the "raspberry drizzle" didn't really add much beyond visual interest. But once I developed a technique to create perfect bites of a bit of cake, a bit of filling, and a dollop of frosting (denuded of the almonds), I was quite happy with the creation.

My guess is these holiday creations are going to retire soon, so if you're hankerin' for a bit of fruit-flavored flourless fun, head over to your local Crumbs ASAP.

Crumbs
Locations throughout Manhattan

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.

LWF&D goes all Benedict Arnold at Crumbs

As I mentioned earlier, I've been battling a rather severe cupcake craving since my departure from Billy's. Today I was at the office planning my post-dinner indulgence. I got a window of time to duck out for a quick cupcake-shopping trip and realized my only real option was... Crumbs. Crumbs, the McDonald's of cupcakes, whose pastries are the size and shape of softballs and come in as many colors and flavors as Sanford Mr. Sketch markers (don't pretend you never ended up with colored dots on your nose from smelling those markers as a kid). Sigh. Off I went to the Crumbs by Bryant park.

After dinner, I unveiled my prey. It was a Butterfinger cupcake: vanilla cake, filled and frosted with Butterfinger buttercream and edged in chocolate chips. Overkill, much?

Looks innocent, but was almost as big as my head

I cut it in half and chose one of the halves, wrapping the other one for later. The filling job went admirably deep, almost all the way to the bottom of the center of the cake. I took one bite of the cake by itself, and... well, it was actually pretty good. Really moist, with an almost artificial vanilla flavor. Very much like cake mix. The Butterfinger frosting was totally intense, with a true Butterfinger taste and even some of the shattery texture, all thanks to the pieces of real Butterfinger mixed in. I could have done without the chocolate chips around the edge, but hey, they made it pretty. I ate half the cupcake and was full; ten minutes later I had stomach cramps. The other half went in the trash.

Well filled and frosted

While I'll never go to Crumbs if I can help it (i.e., if there are other, better cupcake options nearby), this particular cupcake was actually not as bad as some of their others-- I think the Butterfinger pieces actually helped mask the usual shortening-y taste of their frosting. But regardless, eating Crumbs is very much like eating McDonalds (in theory... I haven't eaten McDonald's in well over a decade): it tastes good, but it makes you feel both crappy and slightly guilty afterwards. Oh well. Consider the cupcake craving sated.