![]() ![]() Jacobs's colorful retro clothing is a mirror of the Magnolia's colorful retro cupcakes, and it appeals to the same dressed-up young crowd.įashion and cupcakes also collide at Joe, a new coffeehouse on Waverly Place, where the cupcakes are baked by Amy Sedaris, an actress who has appeared on ''Sex and the City.'' (Sarah Jessica Parker persuaded the owner to carry them.) ![]() ![]() The connection of cupcakes and chic is inescapable, especially in Greenwich Village, where three Marc Jacobs stores have opened within a block of the Magnolia Bakery. It happens to be a delicious combination it's also a visual joke. Seizing on the back-to-childhood trend, New York bakeries like Kitchenette and Sage American Kitchen have engineered copies of the packaged Hostess cupcake, right down to the squiggle of white icing on the top, the chocolate frosting that peels off in one piece, and the cream filling. Like skimpy Petit Bateau T-shirts and Hello Kitty knapsacks, cupcakes are supposedly designed for children, but they have also become fashionable accessories for knowing grown-ups. In another signal that adult tastes are driving the market, the Little Pie Company has fused the cupcake and cocktail trends in its new mojito cupcake, with lime and rum flavoring inside and green lime and mint frostings. She now rotates more than 20 variations, including Boston cream, jelly doughnut and cappuccino. Kozicharow installed a suggestion box that quickly filled with cupcake concepts. Soon after opening with a single cupcake on her menu, Ms. ''And it's grown-ups who talk about the cupcakes all the time.'' ''The kids come in after school, but they aren't the reason we stay open until 11 p.m.,'' Ms. Mia Kozicharow, a co-owner of Crumbs, agrees that nostalgic adults, not children, are her main audience for cupcakes. They start remembering how their mothers sent them to school on their birthdays with cupcakes packed in a cardboard shirt box. ''It's about a return to childhood, whenever you grew up.''įran Sippel, the pastry chef at Downtown Atlantic in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, said that adult customers can grow emotional about her extra-large cupcakes, glazed with Callebaut chocolate ganache and rolled in multicolored sprinkles. ''It's not about any particular decade - the 50's, the 70's,'' she said. in psychology), suggests that cupcakes have a kind of universal nostalgic appeal. Appel, who opened the Buttercup Bake Shop in 1999 (and who has a Ph.D. ![]() Or is it?īakers agree that the swelling trade in cupcakes is all about a combination of childhood and chic. (Unlike a slice of cake, a cupcake can be eaten on the street, like a hot dog.) But a cupcake is just cake, some batter, some frosting, some sprinkles. What is it about a cupcake? Some New York fans cite the high frosting-to-cake ratio as the source of the appeal others, its portability. According to Sylvia Perez, manager of the Cupcake Cafe (which has led the cupcake resurgence since opening in 1988), in the last two years, orders for cupcakes have finally overtaken orders for full-size cakes. At Crumbs, a seven-month-old Amsterdam Avenue bakery, supersize $2.95 cupcakes have fueled success: the owners are expanding to the East Side.īakers report that cupcakes have begun elbowing out tiered cakes at weddings. The Magnolia brings in over $40,000 a week from cupcakes alone. They are art, they are fashion, they are a tourist attraction and they can be big business. In New York, cupcakes are not lopsided school-bake-sale affairs. On another night at midnight, the line still snakes out the door, and tourists pose for pictures, proudly holding cupcakes frosted in pale green and lavender for the cameras.Ĭhalk it all up to cupcakes. Appel left to open a competing bakery uptown.) Shouting is heard on the sidewalk: the expensive florist who moved in when the birds were priced out is angrily tossing cupcake wrappers out of his sidewalk planters. The partners have long since fallen out over expansion plans. No longer open for breakfast, the bakery must use that time to make cupcakes: 3,000 will be sold before the day is out. the metal gates are still down at Magnolia. While the breakfast regulars sipped coffee, the first batch of Magnolia cupcakes was baked, frosted and set out on the windowsill.įorward to summer 2003. It was a small cake, so they poured the extra batter into a handy muffin tin. ONE morning in 1996, Allysa Torey and Jennifer Appel, partners who had just opened the Magnolia storefront bakery next to a scruffy bird shop on a sleepy corner of Bleecker Street, made a cake. ![]()
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