First off: THANK YOU GROUPON! I write about food on this site, but you can see an article that I wrote for another blog on this fabulous group discount service that gave me my dozen cupcakes for half the price.
Second: HELLOOOOOOO BUTTERLANE!
Ahhh, a group of folks after my own heart! Ever since I was two and my Dad gave me a small stuffed cow that was featured in all of my childhood photos, I have LOVED cows. I have a sweet spot in my heart for the resident cow of my childhood vacation spot, Block Island, and hopefully sometime soon will have his portrait purchased 8 or so years ago framed and hung on my wall. So you can imagine my little heart jumping for joy at the site of this beautiful bovine hanging on the wall of my sweet-tooth driven destination. Everyone working at Butter Lane is unbelievably friendly, talkative, and so helpful.
Butter Lane is like most cupcakeries in that they have two or three cake bases (vanilla, chocolate, and I believe their only other one is banana), and then the frosting combinations are where the creativity lies.
You know something has to be good when a patron already in the store tells you to trust the employees to picking the flavors for you.
Which brings me to:
The Cupcakes!
Ahh, such high expectations. And for the most part, Butter Lane came through. To start off with, the brief not-so-goods: the vanilla and chocolate cakes that I had were just a bit dry. They crumbled too easily, and didn’t dissolve on my tongue the way I expect cake to. I also like my chocolate cake to be a bit bolder, with a chocolate flavor that you would be happy to have in your corner in a fight between the frosting. A real hold-it’s-own kind of chocolate cake. Butter Lane’s chocolate was just a tad shy of the bar.
Now that we’ve got that squared away, on to the good stuff!
Ohhhh that frosting! The buttercreams are absolutely DELISH. They make all kinds: vanilla, chocolate, maple, cinnamon, raspberry, strawberry, espresso. And the banana cake was ON POINT! Moist, delicious, and not too overwhelming on the banana. It’s no surprise that my favorite cupcake flavor came with a banana base. The Banana with Cinnamon Buttercream is the kind of thing that I would go back and order a whole dozen of at full price.
Overall, I give Butter Lane a thumbs and a half up. I’m going to go back to see if cake is a bit moister next time, but I’m going to protect against dry mouth with at least a half dozen with the banana base. Of course, now that I’ve said that, the next time I go everything else will be oozing moisture and the banana will feel like sand in your mouth. That’s just how the world works.
Butter Lane
123 East Seventh Street, New York, New York 10009 (p) 212.677.2880
