Best of NY: Buttercup Bake Shop Takes the Cake
Megan Rooney
Issue date: 11/1/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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One glance at the tiny, well-lit bakery is enough to draw in any customer. The 1950s décor, featuring a pastel color scheme and pressed tin ceiling attract patrons like moths to a light-and that is before they spot the desserts.
The cupcakes, Buttercup Bake Shop's most famous creation, are located to the right of the entrance. They have developed a cult-like following, for both their taste and price. No matter how many cupcakes are ordered, the price is always $1.85 each. One-word inscriptions can be made for an additional 50 cents per treat.
Buttercup features one dozen varieties of cupcakes. The most popular come in traditional yellow and chocolate cake and are topped with a thick, layer of yellow, pink, green, peach, or brown butter cream icing. German chocolate, Lady Baltimore, lemon, red velvet, sour cream spice were added to the menu recently.
The bakeshop also has a booming business in takeout cupcakes and layered 7-and-9-inch cakes, which are also available in enormous single slices. Muffins, brownies, Cocoa Krispie squares, pecan pie bars, assorted individual cheesecakes, and seasonal pies are also available.
Buttercup was born in 1999 when Jennifer Appel ventured out from Magnolia Bakery in New York City's Greenwich Village, where she and her business partner sold cookies, pies, mini cheesecakes, and of course, cupcakes. After an episode of Sex and the City featured the cupcakes, the bakery was publicized in style articles and fashion magazine trend alerts.
New York Magazine attributes the cupcakes renaissance to some combination of "a post-diet-fad craving for sugary indulgence, the girly-girl culture that spun up around Sex and the City, and a regressive nostalgia that spurs adults to seek out the comfort foods of some idealized, vanilla-scented childhood."
With a prior career as a clinical psychologist, it seems like Appel was right on target with her business idea.
"Customers tell me they feel embraced by childhood memories of their neighborhood bake shop. These classic desserts are satisfying the midtown neighborhood folk as well as the most prestigious of clients," she says.
Appel continues, "Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Tiffany's, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Miramax Films, DreamWorks, the Late Show with David Letterman and many Broadway theaters, among others, have all been celebrating their special occasions with these delightfully delicious cakes and cupcakes."