Via the Voice

Aunt Butchie's brings "a little bit of Brooklyn" cupcakes to Manhattan. The Village Voice reports:

"[Partner, Aunt Butchie's Cupcakes, Sean] Rich says he's hoping to open the store, located in a former Yolato outpost, by February 1. "We're trying to bring a little bit of Brooklyn to Manhattan," he says. As to how one makes cupcakes more Brooklyn, Rich says that flavors like cannoli, zeppole, and cheesecake will "focus in on the Brooklyn lifestyle."

After more than 15 years in the cake business, why venture into the increasingly crowded cupcake field?

"We've always been known for our cakes, but we're really focusing on what the people want," says Rich. "We've seen over the last year or so that more and more customers were requesting that we do some cupcakes; less people were taking pieces of cake. It's the next best thing, really." When they introduced their cupcake line eight months ago, he continues, they started with three flavors, and expanded to 15. Last week, one of the bakery's locations turned out 90 dozen; over Christmas, they did 5,000. "You put some cupcakes out and people go crazy," Rich says.

So crazy, that the company is planning to open a couple more cupcake shops in Manhattan over the next 18 months or so; Rich says that while they haven't yet picked locations, Midtown seems a likely destination."

I am eager to try them! More to come, I'm sure.

SNAFU with the deep-fried cupcakes (updated!)

I do not know what happened with the deep-friend Robicellei's cupcakes at ChipShop. This is a distressing newsbreak for me (well, sounds like quite a few people were upset). I'm investigating. Anyone know?


Edit/Update: From Allison of Robicelli's:

"I really don't know what to say -- I don't know what's going on on their end, so I can't comment for ChipShop. I made a ton of these cupcakes that are sitting in my fridge now (which I scrambled to make when I found it went viral), so I'm out some good money too.

What I can say is that once we deliver the cupcakes, what these shops do with them is out of our hands. We put our heart and soul into these things, so we hope that our retailers will give the cupcakes the respect they deserve. I am sure that whatever went down this weekend at ChipShop was not done in any sort of malicious manner, but was either the result of a technical malfunction that could not be remedied or by simply selling out. It is possible that the weekend staff was unaware of the special because the entire stock had been sold out Friday night. The people at ChipShop are fantastic individuals and consummate professionals, so I'm sure that any confusion was probably the result of good, old-fashioned misunderstanding.

In the interim, I have spoken to the writers of the blog "Fucked In Park Slope," who also went down this weekend only to have their cupcake request denied, and will be arranging an Elvis cupcake giveaway with them over the weekend. If ChipShop isn't hooking the people up with their cupcakes, then I'm giving them away for free!"




Rock on, Allison. Hope this makes FiPS feel better, I know I'd be mollified.