by Erin
After our delicious meal at The Spotted Pig, Lauren and I headed around the corner to the Magnolia Bakery, famous for its cupcakes (and its long waiting lines). As we were standing in line, Lauren explained to me that Magnolia uses Italian meringue buttercream frosting, which I learned all about from Warren Brown at Great Tastes a few weeks ago. Italian meringue buttercream uses a lot more butter than sugar, which results in a less-sweet, more-greasy (in my opinion) frosting that doesn't harden when exposed to air (like traditional buttercream), so it's good for people in the cupcake business. However, it's not my preference, so we ditched the line at Magnolia, hit the subway, and headed to Tribeca Treats (slogan: "Think Inside the Box" - cute!!).
Tribeca Treats is right near Lauren's work, so she was well aware that it was a super-cute sweet shop with cupcakes, cookies, and ice cream sandwiches. We ended up ordering one of each of the mini-cupcakes they had that day (including PB&J, carrot cake, black and white, and cookies and cream), plus a variety of their sandwich cookies.
I matched the Tribeca Treat color scheme!
We then headed to Union Square to people-watch and chat, and we ate some of the cookies we'd picked up, including a s'mores cookie (graham cracker cookies with marshmallow filling, dipped in chocolate) and a chocolate caramel cookie (chocolate cookies with caramel filling). We also had a cookie photo-shoot!
Get ready for your close-up, cookies
We didn't get a chance to eat our cupcakes that day, but the next day, post-St. Patty's Day celebrating, we decided forego cereal for breakfast and cut right to the chase: cupcake breakfast! We tried the PB&J cupcake, carrot cake cupcake, and the white on white cupcake.
PB&J Cupcake
Vanilla w/ Chocolate Cupcake
Cookies & Cream Cupcake
The PB&J was vanilla cake with grape jam and peanut butter frosting. It was very delicious, although I feel like the frosting was not really frosting, but rather straight up peanut butter that had been put in a piping bag. It was great, but it was a lot of PB to handle. The carrot cake was also very good, and had some of the best cream cheese frosting I've had in a long time.
Needless to say we were on a bit of a sugar rush for the remainder of the day, but hey, I was on vacation! Cupcakes for breakfast is totally allowed, right?
Stay tuned for more NYC eats posts after our Top Chef recap coming up next!
Happy cupcake eating,
EP
totally off topic erin, but your hair looks great in those photos.
ReplyDeleteEP-- you have totally solved your "I don't really like breakfast foods" dilemma (dilemma??)! Cupcakes for breakfast!
ReplyDeleteThose sandwich cookies look amazing. Were they?
ReplyDeleteAlexis - thank you!
ReplyDeleteStef - yes, they were excellent actually. A lot of great flavor in both the cookie and the filling. I still have some and I am trying to make them last!
Magnolia Bakery cupcake icing tastes nothing like the disgusting cake love icing. It's very powder sugary and yummy. (their cakes are a little dry though)
ReplyDeleteHey Erin!
ReplyDeleteI've been lurking for a while, but just wanted to let you know Magnolia SUCKS and is *NOT* worth the hype.
Try Buttercup Bake Shop when you're up next (the one midtown east--2nd ave. btw 52nd&51st not the franchise on 72nd st.). A dear old friend of mine is one of the managers there and they have THE. BEST. CUPCAKES. EVER. I promise. :) Glad to hear you had such a great trip.
xox, Shannon H.