Crumbs vs Butter Lane
Crumbs Chocolate Snowball Cupcake
Crumbs is truly a magical experience that will transport you back to your childhood with cupcakes like the Fluffernutter (Vanilla cake filled and frosted with peanut butter flavored frosting, edged with white sprinkles and drizzled in white chocolate), the Devil Dog (Chocolate cake with classic vanilla buttercream filling and frosting, sprinkled with chocolate crumbs and mini chocolate chips) and Cotton Candy (Vanilla cake with piled high with cotton candy flavored cream cheese and rolled in cotton candy crunch) among others that incorporate favorite candy bars and, of course, the classic chocolates and vanillas.
Crumbs boasts over 24 unique varieties listed on their website (not counting the basic ones with sprinkles added—still the same cupcake) plus a few seasonal varieties. These are not your average cupcakes. Bigger than your fist, these monsters are a carnival sideshow of deliciousness. So sweet and sugary, it’s a challenge to finish the whole thing! You might expected these treats to be 5 bucks or more, but at $3.75 a cupcake, it’s one cheap sugar high. Crumbs beat out bakeries like Buttercup, Babycakes and the highly overrated Magnolia.
The problem with Crumbs is that they’ve become something of a phenomenon and a chain with shops all over Manhattan and LA. Since chains rely on consistency—all need to fit the same image, the same formula, the same expectations, etc— in their quest for cupcake domination, Crumbs has just forced itself to conform to the average and bank on its name.
They still make a delicious, gigantic cupcake perfect for kids.
Cupcake Medley from butterlane.com
About 5 months ago, Butter Lane opened its quaint little door on a surprisingly quiet stretch of 7th Street in the East Village– only one block away from the chaos, karaoke and paraphernalia shops of St Marks.
Even the website makes mouths water—fresh eggs, organic butter, sugar, vanilla beans dancing to the most adorable French song (one of the very few cases where music on a website doesn’t irritate the flesh off your back).
Options please everyone and your choices are written all over a large chalkboard on the wall. You can pick your cake flavor, pick your icing, mix and match and they will frost your cupcake right there in front of you! The flavor options are much simpler than Crumbs, but also more sophisticated with the option of the sweeter, thicker American buttercream or a lighter French buttercream. The cupcakes are actual cupcake size so you can have one, even two without feeling like you’ve overdone it.
You’ve never tasted anything like these delicate delectables. The French buttercream is light and not sickeningly sweet with little flecks of vanilla bean, like the haagen-daz of cake frosting. In the soft fluffy cake, you can taste every ingredient—butter, sugar, milk, eggs. It was an incredible experience in the American culture of over-processed and pre-packaged foods. Sadly, we forget sometimes how wonderful natural flavors are. It was like tasting them for the first time again.
There is no question: Butter Lane makes the best cupcake in New York City.
