Resuscitation Equipment Is Available Behind the Counter

Butter Lane Bakery – Banana Cupcakes
Butter Lane Bakery

At this point, we look downright elderly: hunched over, shuffling down the street, groaning unintelligibly.  We are so full we are ready to die.

But we have nothing if not stamina, and like any great soldier, we continue on our journey in search of dessert, all the way murmuring a faint “We have not yet begun to fight!” under our breath (apologies to Captain John Paul Jones).

Good to Know

We head to the East Village’s Butter Lane Cupcakes, which possesses what Ted Allen claims to be the best of a CLASSIC dish: cupcakes.

Now, we are both cupcake aficionados.  We may not know much about food, but we know our way around a cupcake.  It is one of the few delicacies about which we are discerning.

Ask anyone living in Manhattan, and they will assert that their favorite cupcake place is the best for reasons A, B, and C.  We happen to believe in the New York Classics: for Ginger, this place is Magnolia Bakery, and for Vodka, it is Crumbs Bake Shop.  Magnolia and Crumbs are both loved and loathed by the New York populace for various reasons, up to and including accusations of "being touristy,” “having dry cake,” “becoming commercialized,” “creating too sweet frosting,” etc.  Some people like standard, taste-like-they-were-made-in-Mom’s-kitchen cupcakes.  Apparently, Ted Allen is one of these people.

Following Ted’s advice, we order a banana cake with vanilla frosting (which is made from real vanilla beans).  A perk of Butter Lane is that you can mix and match your preference of cake and frosting to suit your taste.   A downfall of Butter Lane is that the cupcakes are actually "real" cupcakes – they are small.  They are also sweet (both in taste and in sentiment) and comforting. 

Honey, I Shrunk the Cupcake

The Butter Lane cupcake is wonderfully delicious; the cake is moist and the frosting is plentiful.  The problem we had with it is the exact reason Ted Allen featured it on The Best Thing I Ever Ate: it’s little like a homemade cupcake.  For us (mostly for Vodka), when we want a cupcake, we want an event: a 500+ calorie monstrosity that will take us more than 90 seconds to eat.  The Butter Lane cupcake is simple and lovely.  But it is not an event.

As stated fourteen times, by this point in the evening, we are ready to die.  We thought about asking the Butter Lane workers to utilize the shop’s resuscitation equipment on us.  So once again, perhaps we did not find the cupcake as scrumptious as we might have if we were not already about to burst.

Or maybe we just prefer to eat cupcakes the size of our heads.

Butter Lane Bakery’s Banana Cupcakes: 4 stars