The Quintessential Cupcake

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The Devil's Food cupcake from Amy's Bread is the best chocolate cupcake in Manhattan.

I don't know if you've noticed, but New York City has a lot of freakin' cupcakes. Somewhat surprisingly, I've never made it my goal to sample every one. And the reason for that is, I'm so blissfully content with the cupcakes at Amy's Bread.

Basically, when I want a cupcake, I want just that, a cup-sized cake. Nothing outrageous, nothing pretentious; just give me something simple and pretty, wholesome, and yes, delicious. Finding old-fashioned cupcakes is not the easiest thing to do these days, as more and more bakers seem to be taking a Lady Gaga approach to cupcake making. Everyone's pushing the envelope. There are a lot of crazy concoctions out there, a lot of bold flavors, bright colors and frostings drizzled and bedecked with caramel, cookies and candy. Even bacon—bacon! Then there are Magnolia cupcakes, which I do love. But Magnolia cupcakes, with their pale pastel frostings and mildly sweet cake have a kind of ceremonious feel to them. Consequently, they don't speak to my soul the way the more traditional, homey cupcakes at Amy's Bread do.

Pictured above, is a Devil's Food cupcake from Amy's. Sometimes, I try scraping off a third of the frosting to cut calories but after one bite I'll spread it back on because it's so darn good. And the cake—oh the cake! It's the richest, most perfect, chocolate cake. The vanilla cake with pink frosting is also excellent.

Bottom line, if you're in New York City and want a classic, delicious cupcake, then find the nearest Amy's Bread. I obviously recommend the Devil's Food cupcake. But if you really want to be decadent, if you really want to be sinful, go for a slice of their Devil's Food cake!

Gluten Free, Flavor Full

Fear no more the search for gluten-free cakes and cupcakes for friends and loved-ones with a gluten-intolerance. It's places like this, Tu-lu's gluten-free bakery, aka Tully's Bakery, in the East Village, that motivate food enthusiasts like me to start a blog.

Though I am not one of the 1 in 133 Americans affected by Celiac disease, I do love cupcakes; this is essentially why I'm writing about Tu-lu's, where I recently purchased two large cupcakes.

Behold:




Chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting: First off, you can smell the chocolate when you cut/bite into it. The cake itself is dense with a natural, traditional chocolate flavor. The chocolate frosting is stupendous: intense, bold, yummy. You almost want to search for a hint of brandy in there because the flavor is so intensely savory, but the only intoxicating element in this frosting is the divine taste of rich cocoa. It's also so light that it melts in your mouth.

Vanilla cupcake with vanilla cream-cheese frosting: The cake has a sturdy yet moist texture and a mild vanilla flavor that doesn't seek the limelight, it's more like the wafer cone that holds the frozen custard, which in this case is a robust vanilla frosting with a splendiferous cream-cheese punch.

As soon as I knew it, my glass of milk was empty and I was staring down at a plate of gluten-free crumbs. But in spite of having just devoured two cupcakes, I didn't feel heavy or weighed down. It made me wonder if maybe I have a sensitivity to gluten? I don't, but it's to the baker's credit that these festive treats make you ponder the presence of gluten in your diet as something potentially deleterious to your health rather than other GF baked goods that simply leave you feeling sorry for those who can't eat gluten.

So who's responsible? Quality, as I discover time and time again, is no accident, but the result of training, effort, skill, passion and ability. Owner/baker, Tully, originally from Memphis, Tennessee, studied at Le Cordon Bleu and then moved here to NYC, where she interned at Gramercy Tavern. You can read her story on her Web site which basically describes how she was diagnosed as gluten intolerant and that this twist of fate led her on a search for delicious gluten-free cakes and cookies. There were none to be found, so she strove to create a recipe of her own, ultimately arriving at a winning combination of rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour along with natural and organic ingredients. What an amazing story of turning trial into triumph, Tully's Bakery is dharma at its most delicious.