The Ultimate NYC Cupcake Crawl

Feb 28

Feb 28 The Ultimate NYC Cupcake Crawl

There is this incredible cupcake craze in New York City. There are little Cupcake Shops around almost every corner and audit managers tend to “reward” their audit teams for their hard work with a box of Magnolia cupcakes. Cupcakes were also the ultimate form of celebrating Valentine’s Day among non-lovers. Cupcakes in New York City are basically the ultimate gifts. I realized that the number of Cupcake Shops in NYC is never ending – and every weekend I discovered a new one. Then the brilliant idea of a Cupcake Crawl developed in my mind. I mean, if you can do a “Pub Crawl” – why can’t you do a Cupcake Crawl? I started by google-ing Cupcake Shops in NYC. What helped me the most was the incredible iPhone applications that you get these days: Yelp, Goop, CityGuides, NFT (“Not For Tourists”) and the walking Yellow Pages. To my surprise I ended up with 8 Cupcake Shops, all within walking distance in lower Manhattan. Chloe helped me to design the cutest scorecard with the slogan: “Keep Calm and have a Cupcake”. On these scorecards we rated each shop based on the following criteria: Sweetness, Icing, Size, Moistness and Appearance.

We started our trip at the amazing EATALY – definitely one of my favorite places in the city. Here we grabbed a quick coffee and off we went to the first stop – Baked by Melissa.

Baked by Melissa: It happened to us. We wandered into a sweet smelling bakery thinking that we were only going to order one each. But when the door shut behind us, we suddenly needed to taste everything in sight! For Melissa Bushell, this moment was the inspiration behind Baked by Melissa. The “Mini of the Month”, a Blueberry Crumble Cupcake was irresistible, but luckily these cupcakes are no bigger than a quarter and this definitely helped our stamina for the rest of the day!

From there we walked to the Chelsea Market to pay a visit to Eleni's. Eleni’s has classic cupcakes, plus elaborately decorated theme cupcakes. You can get specialty birthday or sports cupcakes and have a small party in the back, where you decorate your own cupcakes. Eleni’salso has great New York themed cookies. When we were there they actually had Oscar themed cupcakes - so perfect for the Oscars that was screening that evening. Eleni's was my favorite. The store is perfect, the cupcakes are fresh, but maybe a little bit too sweet. But their packaging was extremely poor!

From Chelsea we walked all the way to Washington Square - just to find out that Billy's Bake Shop is not on 9th street but on 9th avenue! I was waiting for something like that to happen. Well, it was probably meant to be. We also skipped Magnolia's and Crumbs - since those are the general ones and everyone has already had both of them, because like I said - cupcakes are what's getting these NYC auditors through busy season. We have considered Magnolia's and Crumbs in the scoring - but I'm sad to say that they have definitely suffered under the lack of not visiting them on Crawl day. Since Billy's didn't work out - we took a taxi to the next stop - The Little Cupcake Bake Shop.

Most of us bought a bottle of coffee or a water - anything to get rid of the sweetness. Talking about sweetness - our next stop came at exactly the right time. Babycakes is a slightly healthier cupcake shop, with refined sugar-free cupcakes sweetened with agave nectar. The organic cupcakes are also dairy and egg free and you can get gluten-free as well. Although Babycakes cupcakes are significantly more expensive, you can feel good about supporting the organic café and – if you have allergies or dietary sensitivities, still enjoy the treat. This treat was not very enjoyable for me and I just had one bite of the two that we shared and not more. May I never ever be a diabetic! I guess I wasn't the only one who felt that way - since no one voted for Babycakes as their favorite.

And then the last stop - the winner!! Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Their cupcakes were most definitely the most delicious. But I don't know what else it was that actually won the hearts of three of the people in the Group. Was it the blackboard at the door that explained the cupcake craving perfectly?

Or was it their colorful cupcakes?

Or was it just simply the fact that everyone felt a little relieved that this was the last stop?

Well no matter what it was - we all walked out of there with huge smiles on our faces. Life is all about the experiences and doing something a little bit different than everyone else. Life is all about trying something new. We saw parts of New York that we wouldn't have seen otherwise, and we got to appreciate a bit of someone else's effort to make a living in this amazing place.

Our last stop was MacDonalds - salty fries and ketchup. Some even had a Happy Meal.

What a successful day!! Here is to laughter, exploring, friendships, and love for eating!