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The Cupcake
Café
The Cupcake Café is one of New York City’s most beloved
bakeries.Located on the corner
of 39th street and 9th avenue, this “cozy mecca for lovers of all
kinds of delicious homemade baked goods, including muffins, scones,
coffee cakes, waffles, pies, sticky buns, and doughnuts” is best
known “for its fanciful cakes and cupcakes, elaborately decorated
with homemade buttercream frosting.” The fantastical creations are
famous for the Café’s trademark buttercream flowers, which bloom
all over the cakes, tumbling down the sides in a rainbow of vivid
colors.
Before the birth of the Cupcake Café, an Italian bakery
resided at the corner storefront space.Joan Lilly says in “The Cupcake Café Cookbook” she
co-authored with her sister Ann Warren, that she visited
“regularly,” although, according to Lilly, its offerings were
limited, the space was unwelcoming, and the owner
surly.At the time, Warren and
her husband, Michael Warren, had been “scouting around for a spot
to open a wholesale doughnut operation.” They had met as bumbling
employees at the Well-Bred Loaf, yet another bakery, fallen in
love, and decided to see if they could start their own
business.“Why Ann, who is
essentially a morning toast eater, and Michael, who, if anyone were
keeping track, would probably qualify for a regional oatmeal
consumption award, decided to open a place whose original mission
was to offer made-from-scratch doughnuts, remains something of a
mystery,” but they may have been inspired by the fact that the
original doughnut establishment in New York City was located only
blocks away from the Cupcake Café!Lilly also reports that the pair was concerned
“that the tradition of fresh doughnuts in New York not be allowed
to fade.” In spite of her eating habits, Warren had been cooking
and baking “seriously forever.” In the spring of 1988, the husband
and wife duo rented the space, and called upon Lilly, who was a
longtime publisher, for help behind the counter.Soon they had become a threesome, selling all
manner of homemade baked goods, all baked on the premises—“Nothing
fancy, but all very tasty and
reassuring.”
<gallery> Image:Cupcake2.jpg|From the
Cupcake Café Website! </gallery>
Not for long, however,
would they remain simple; Warren, who studied at the Art Students
League, changed this when she began elaborately decorating her
cakes.“While the doughnuts
continue to win recognition and have retained their place of honor
in the Cupcake’s offerings, it is the decorated cakes that have
made it difficult to find anyone in several states who has not
heard of the place.” Recommending them for, among other delights,
their showstopping wedding cakes, New York Magazine raved, “The
blossoms on Cupcake Café’s cakes—a veritable Winterthur of
buttercream botanicals—set co-owner Ann Warren’s cakes apart…Her
colors, shapes, and arrangements seem to bloom from roots beneath
the frosting.” In spite of the fact that the owners have only ever
advertised the Cupcake Café in a children’s magazine, Zuzu,
“overnight…Ann went from decorating cakes with portraits of dearly
departed German shepherds to decorating birthday cakes for Madonna
and Mick Jagger.”
<gallery> Image:Flowercup.jpg|From the
Cupcake Café Website! </gallery>
Many attribute part of
the Cupcake Café’s appeal to its “time-warp
ambiance.What with the 1920s
and 1930s music, and the resistance-to-renovation interior, you
might easily think you were walking into a 1940s coffee shop.”
Lilly believes “that the Café’s appeal comes from the fact that
people have adopted it as their second home, one that’s a bit more
chaotic than their own perhaps, but where they feel equally
comfortable and can count on there always being something good to
eat.” A second home to dessert-lovers searching for moist and
beautifully decorated cupcakes, a staple of the chic Hell’s Kitchen
crowd, and the go-to bakery for everyone from mothers throwing
children’s birthday parties to the rich and famous, the Cupcake
Café has secured a place in many a New Yorker’s
heart.Their baked goods,
“renowned for tasting even better than they look,” are truly works
of art.So, as per their
instruction, “go forth, [eat] your cake, and admire it, too.”
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