I heart Butter Lane!

Following Big Booty and a lengthy walk (in all we walked over 100miles in 7 days!), we popped to Butter Lane for some cupcakes to have with a cup of tea in our B&C, (which if you're ever staying in NY I highly recommend -also Butter Lane and Ciao for Now are both less than 5mins walk away!)

Butter Lane's logo is "The better cupcake" and they aint lying! When you enter their cupcakery you are offered tastings of their frostings - in many flavours and in both French and American style - we sampled the coconut (yum) and strawberry (v.nice!). We opted for our usual 2 classics to test them, a vanilla for me, a chocolate for Manny, both with American frosting. And oh.my.god they were GOOD! In fact they would rate as one of my favourite cupcakes ever. The cake was incredibly moist with a really nice flavour and texture and as for the frosting I could've eaten it by the tub! You could see the flecks of vanilla running through it - utterly fantastic!

Butter Lane only made me want to move to the LES even more!!

Butter Lane, 123 E 7th St, NY

The New York cupcake round up begins...Big Boooty cupcakes

I heart New York even more than cupcakes. Seriously I'd give up cupcakes forever to move there and that would take a lot of willpower as there are cupcakes everywhere! While there we tried cupcakes from 9 different places - we were never going to manage to try all forty plus that I'd found and the ones we had were mostly v.good!

First up on our second day in NY was the Big Booty Bread Company. As we weren't that hungry following a hearty Ukrainian breakfast at Veselka (and to be honest I was still a bit stuffed after my banana and walnut pancakes from Clinton Street Baking Co on the Weds..the only thing I ate on the day of arrival...and even then I only ate half, Manny munched the rest!) we opted to share 2 cupcakes. According to Chowhounders Big Booty makes the best red velvet cupcake in NY. I can't say I agree...the cake itself was v.small and burnt, like it'd had shrunk in the baking and the frosting was too cheesy and sweet. Manny liked the red velvet but he has a v.sweet tooth, although he did say it wasn't one of the best he'd tried. The other flavour we shared was Dulce de leche and this was a much better cake. Base had a lovely texture and the frosting was tasty but again v.sweet, you could feel the sugar rush. I love dulce de leche but not even sure if I could've eaten a whole one of these myself!

All in all, Big Booty is a cute place to pop into if you're in the neighbourhood for a coffee and cake but not worth schlepping over town for! If I went again I'd try one of their infamous dulce de leche buns rather than their cupakes I think!

Big Booty Bread Co

261 W.23rd St, Ny

Shopping to cheer myself up

I'm still missing New York so I went shopping to cheer myself up today, which led me to Next homestore in Tottenham Court Road and this ultra cute shelf unit! Unfortunately they didnt' have it in store so I had to order it online - well I tried but their site isn't working properly so I had to order it on the telephone which proved to be quite an ordeal (all I can say is their non-English call centre is not good!) but on Friday I shall have this lovely item delivered, and soon after (Manny's DIY skills permitting) it will be hanging in my kitchen.

Cute as a cupcake!

Next also have bedding with cupcakes on but only up to double size and we have a king (pah), I may have to get the curtains though - I got a mug there too - pics to follow!

Mac sugarsweet collection

I'm back from NY (boo) and will be blogging about the cupcakes I ate in the next few days but thought I'd share this in the meantime...the new Mac sugarsweet collection.

Thanks to Cakespy for alerting me to it :)

I'm Scottish but...

I think even I'd refuse the deep fried cupcake!*

We saw these at the Urbana County Fair when we were in the States but this one is courtesy of This is why you're fat!

*for the record I've NEVER eaten a deep fried mars bar, pizza nor creme egg!

Photo credit - from Robert Takata's Flickr - thanks Robert 

Cupcakes sell houses

Roger Bailey became so fed up with his agents – over the 18-month period he was on the market, he tried two national estate agencies and two local ones – that he decided to take matters into his own hands and sell his £450,000 Berkshire home himself. Having already written the details and provided photographs for one of the agents – "we had to write the description because theirs was wrong and the photos we had were just better" – he produced his own sales brochure and went to distribute them at his local supermarket. His secret weapon? Cupcakes.

"We baked a tray of cupcakes and put picture transfers of the house on top," he says. "In my professional life I had sold million-dollar equipment at conferences but it was still so embarrassing standing there in the foyer of Costco trying to interest shoppers. But, you know, people said it was a brilliant idea."

Operation Cupcake was a strategy dreamed up for the brutally titled Axe the Agent? – the question-mark, by the way, is almost entirely dispensable – a whole recession-era series dedicated to bringing out your inner estate agent. And Roger is the programme's equivalent of a Blind Date wedding for, incredibly, he has now sold his house. By the time you read this, he and his wife Treva should have exchanged on their large family home near Reading, saving themselves several thousand pounds in commission and many more gloomy months in limbo.

From the Telegraph

Cupcake-a-licious

Cancer-stricken reality TV star Jade Goody’s wedding cake was baked for free by a Ewell businesswoman.

Laura Conway, 28, worked into the small hours of Sunday morning to create seven tiers of 170 cup cakes sprinkled with glitter and topped with iced butterflies, hearts and flowers.

The owner of Cupcake-A-Licious was called on Wednesday night by publicist Max Clifford to make the Vanilla Sweetheart and Pretty in Pink cupcakes in time for Goody’s wedding to Jack Tweed on Sunday.

Miss Conway began baking on Friday evening and had only a few hours sleep before she resumed work on Saturday morning and didn’t rest until it was completed on Sunday morning.

She said she ordered dozens of boxes of icing sugar, caster sugar, flour and eggs to make each vanilla sponge cup cake, which normally cost £2 each and was made with her secret recipe.

Story and bottom picture from yourlocalguardian, top pic from News of the World