Cupcake Overload! - NYC

This week was my friend's birthday, which obviously means birthday cake! We were celebrating her birthday at a bar, so I decided to bring cupcakes instead, so we wouldn't have to worry about silverware and having to cut the cake. Over the past few years, there has definitely been an overload of new cupcake bakeries opening up in NYC, particularly after Sex and the City featured Magnolia Bakery cupcakes. I've tried Magnolia cupcakes a couple times, and each time, I am disappointed by how dry the cupcakes are! Instead, I much prefer Crumbs. However, since their cupcakes are pretty massive (see below), I decided to pick up mini cupcakes in one of their "Best Seller Collection - Taste Pack" ~ 12 one-inch cupcakes for $18. I only had the strawberry shortcake one and absolutely loved it! It wasn't as sweet or heavy as you would normally expect from cupcakes, since there was a slight tartness from the strawberry - but then again, I didn't eat all the frosting. Crumbs definitely layers on their frosting! Some of the other flavors included red velvet, chocolate, vanilla, cookies & cream, chocolate black out, chocolate chip cookie, peanut butter & jelly, s'mores, and squiggle (which looks like the Hostess black and white cupcakes!).

These "mini" cupcakes at Crumbs are also muchhh better than the mini cupcakes at Baked by Melissa's in Soho. The ones by Melissa are much smaller [the size of a quarter] so it really is only like 1/2 a bite. Those just taste like pure sugar to me, nothing to really appreciate. Although, Melissa's cupcakes are quite adorable since they are so much smaller.

Since I was already at Crumbs, my brother asked me to pick up 2 cupcakes for him and his friend as well, one red velvet and one vanilla. The red velvet only came in their "signature" size - which means it is massive.

After another tiring week, I noticed that my brother's cupcake was still sitting on the counter, uneaten. I always hate wasting food, so I decided to help my brother out and eat half of his cupcake...just trying to be a good sister ;)

My two complaints about Crumbs are always (1) the massive size ~ really, who can finish one of these in a sitting? and (2) frosting overload! I am not a frosting person, and definitely cannot handle the frosting-to-cake ratio that Crumbs seems to prefer. But I will still choose Crumbs over Magnolia because the cake is much much moister and I can always scrape the frosting off. The red velvet cupcake was incredibly moist and it was definitely a nice treat after my week.

If you aren't as dedicated to red velvet as I am, you should definitely go for one of their smaller "classic" sized cupcakes! Crumbs has started posting their calorie counts [one thing I love about living in NYC is that chains are required to post their calorie counts!] and if you get one of their massive vanilla cupcakes, that's 780 calories! That's almost 50% of your daily recommended caloric intake for girls...not good. [These smaller sized vanilla cupcakes are only 330 calories.]