The Best Cupcakes in New York City | Serious Eats : New York Bare Cutechicksguide Sr Twayla Cat 10 Cute Chicks Guide

The Best Cupcakes in New York City

Posted by Leah Douglas, July 22, 2010 at 10:00 AM

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

We know, we know—it's been years since cupcakes first hit New York. And Serious Eats hasn't been the sort of blog to breathlessly cover every new cupcakery in the city. But at some point we realized that when asked where to find the best cupcakes in New York City, we didn't have an answer. And that just wouldn't do.

So I took the initiative to track down New York's best. But to be honest, I didn't quite know what I was getting myself into. And I soon found myself in charge of arguably the most epic cupcake taste test ever attempted.

The Criteria

So what were we looking for, exactly? Well, a good cupcake, in our minds, has to first and foremost have a great texture—this means a moist cake base with a tender crumb that doesn't get too sticky in the mouth. And the frosting must be smooth and fluffy, but not overly buttery, grainy, or airy. As for the flavor, neither base nor frosting should be too sweet, lest they earn the unfortunate designation of "Sugar Bomb." And the cupcake needs to taste like it reads—if a cupcake's called Devil's Food, then it better be mighty chocolatey. These, and other factors, were at the forefront of our mind during the final tasting.

Almost fifty bakeries, after the jump.

The First Round

Of course, if we were going to do this thing, we were going to do it right. And that meant tasting at least one cupcake from every reputable producer we could find. For our first cupcake go-through, we asked trusted sources, scoured Talk threads, did ample Googling, and even picked up a few cupcakes that we just happened to run into in our daily routines. Overall, we tried 60 cupcakes from 47 bakeries over the course of a few weeks. Here's the full list of bakeries we tried, in no particular order*:

Crumbs
Magnolia Café
Sugar Sweet Sunshine
Buttercup Bake Shop
Billy's Bakery
Babycakes (vegan)
Tonnie's Minis
Butter Lane Cupcakes
Cupcake Café
Sweet Revenge
Baked NYC
Two Little Red Hens
One Girl Cookies
Dessert Club, Chikalicious
Baked by Melissa
Burgers & Cupcakes
Tribeca Treats
Cocoa V (vegan)
Tully's Gluten-Free Bakery
Kyotofu
Amy's Bread
Spot
Trois Pommes
Village Tart
Duane Park Patisserie
Sarabeth's
Oro Bakery
Citarella
Cupcake Stop
Street Sweets
Kumquat Cupcakery
Robecelli's
Pinisi
Once Upon a Tart
Eleni's
Ruthy's Bakery
Alice's Tea Cup
Soutine
Whole Foods
B Café
Sweet Melissa
Make My Cake
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