Magnolia's

Magnolias Bakery is a chain of cupcake shops that are located in New York, Los Angeles and Dubai. There are 4 in New York. Carol-Ann, Neil and I visited the one in Time Square, located in the Rockefeller Center, which was probably one of the more busy ones. It is a very popular cupcake shop, and there is usually a line. The way they are set up is you walk in, into a line, and you order your coffee, cookies, and other sweet stuff in different sections, so it is a little organized, but people don't get that, so it wasn't organized at all. The day we were there the cupcakes they were featuring were: red velvet, German chocolate, pistachio (Cupcake of the month), chocolate ganache, and the Barbie cupcake, in honor of Barbie and Ken getting back together...

"Barbie and Ken are together again. Magnolia helped Ken woo his favorite doll with the creation of the "Barbie" Cupcake: a classic vanilla or chocolate cupcake iced with Barbie's favorite shades of pink buttercream and sparkling sugar crystals, topped with a white chocolate heart inscribed with a special message from Ken"

  They have different themed cupcakes for different occasions, right now they also have a purple cupcakes to promote epilepsy awareness. Very cute place. We chose 2 cupcakes, pistachio, and German chocolate, $3.25 each, because they were specialty cupcakes, and Carol-Ann bought a white chocolate macadamia nut cheesecake, $5.50. They packaged it into little boxes with cupcake holders so they wouldn't fall over, and the put it in a nice Magnolia paper bag with a handle, it was cute, and convenient because we had to ride the bus back to NJ. When we got back we dug into all of the sweets we bought  that day, which you'll read about soon. We split the cheesecake, and the German chocolate cupcake, and I got to eat the pistachio one on my own because I am a hog. The cheesecake had a really strong cream cheese flavor to it, and it was super rich, but it was really good, it had a slight refrigerator taste to it, but it was easy to ignore. The German chocolate cupcake was great, it was very sweet and I wish there was a layer of ganache in or on it, but it was good without it. The pistachio was definitely my favorite, very popular flavor these days. It was a shame that no one wanted to try it. I was told that magnolias wasn't very good, and that they use American butter cream, so I set my standards low. It turns out that it was Italian butter cream, flavored with pistachio and topped with pistachio pieces. The cake was also pistachio flavored which I was not expecting, and it was very moist, which I was also not expecting. The only sad thing about Magnolias is that Carol-Ann's iced coffee wasn't very good, and it was expensive. But over all 9 out of 10, everything was great, it was a cute place, just a little bit expensive, but it's is New York. They also had fun colored shirts that say I (cupcake picture) New York like the I <3 New York shirts, that were about $20. They also sell their own sprinkles, coffee, cook book, apron and bags. Smart smart smart. Check out they're website, it is very organized and informative.

Cupcake Cafe



Yes that is my finger.



Cupcake Cafe is located in 2 different areas of New York, I went to the one in union square, where I could go to American Eagle and buy some jeans! I got off of the subway, in the wrong area again... and had to walk a few blocks to get to Union Square, which is a cute little park by New York University. As I walked along the side of the park I came across a farmers market and bought VT cheese! It was called Pawlett cheese from Bardwell Farm in West Pawlett, VT. It was delicious, very similar to cheddar cheese, and about 5 for a 1/4 pound. Kind of pricey, but it was nice to try something different than Cabot, even though I love Cabot.

                                                                                     

After the farmers market I bought the jeans, and went looking for the Cupcake Cafe. When I found it I was surprised to see that it smaller, and less organized than I thought it would be, the space was also shared with a book store, so there were rows of books and probably about 8 small tables. There wasn't a whole lot to choose from coffee, 4 different types of cupcake combinations, chocolate, vanilla, coffee, and maple walnut. The website shows that there are more to choose from, but maybe I showed up too late. The cupcake's are really cute, all with matching flowers on top. I bought 3 of them, $2.50 each, chocolate with coffee icing, chocolate with chocolate icing, and vanilla with chocolate icing. There isn't a lot of maple syrup in this area, so I was to afraid to try the maple, because I thought it would be fake maple. So I brought them back with me and split each one with Neil, so I wouldn't feel bad about eating 3 cupcakes. The cake part tasted like real cake, and the icing was either an Italian, or Swiss butter cream, so there was no grittiness, it was super smooth. The cupcakes were very moist and satisfying, and they made me very happy, plus they were cute! 8 out of 10 because they were so good, and cute, but not 10 because there wasn't a lot to choose from.

Carlos Bakery

Keeping up with this blog is very difficult, since my computer is a piece of poo. I am finally able to go online after the crashing of the hard drive. It is tough being online because my computer and this strange internet connection don't work very well together. Enough about the computer, let’s talk foooood!

Carlos Bakery, home of the Cake Boss! Watching the show you would never know that they are as busy as they actually are. I was expecting a line, but only because I previously heard there would be one. We made the trip on Friday, hoping the line wouldn't be too bad. In order to get to Hoboken New Jersey, which really is not that far from here, we had to ride the bus into Union City.... I think we were the only white people there; it is a very diverse place. In Union City we had to take the bus to Hoboken. As we rode into Union City, we knew where to take the next bus; the only problem was that we didn't know where to get off the bus we were on. We got off where we thought was the correct location, but we were wrong. We had to walk a couple of sketchy blocks to the location of what we were really hoping was the bus stop. Many busses passed by, except for ours. So of course we started getting nervous that we weren't in the right place. Luckily after about 30min. the bus came by and we rode into Hoboken. Finding Carlos bakery was very easy. They even named the street after the bakery. We probably waited in line for 30 min or so, and had a chance to do some people watching in the mean time.  A limo pulled up when we were half way through the line and a large group of 13-16 year old girls came out dressed like they were going to prom in 1995. It was very obnoxious to see these girls walking around like they were very important, I think it was a birthday party, or maybe an 8th grade graduation, either way I don't know why they were visiting the Cake Boss on a Friday night dressed the way they were. It was our turn to walk inside... I was so excited! My excitement turned to stress when we walked in and found the bakery to be incredibly packed. We were handed a number and had to push though to get a peek at some of the stuff in the cases. We saw some small cakes and cookies, but we definitely did not get a chance to see everything because there were way too many people. We decided on getting a Reese’s cheesecake, or what we thought looked like cheesecake with a Reese’s on top. My number was finally called and I had to yell over the counter at the girl, who did not understand my cheesecake order and said they didn't have that, so now I am very curious as to what that Reese’s thing actually was. We ended up with a 6in Oreo cake and a canoli for a total of $29 dollars. Pretty expensive.

To get back to Teaneck was another complicated journey. We came across the problem of where to get off the bus, so we randomly got off again where we thought was the right spot, then realizing it wasn't, so we walked again to where we waited before, which was not the right spot, so we had to walk around even more to find the bust stop. When we did we were expecting the bus to arrive at 7:15, (what the schedule board said) which was really the AM schedule 7:15 would have been perfect because we found the bus stop around 6:50. When the bus didn't show up at 7:15 we waited until 7:30 then checked the schedule again, we had to wait 45 more minutes for the bus. That’s when we decided to eat the canoli, which I forgot to take a picture of. The shell was very crispy and it was filled with a sweet ricotta filling with pieces of candied orange and little chunks or chocolate, topped with powdered sugar. It was not what I was expecting, but it was delicious. I normally don't like ricotta, but it was perfect and not too sweet. 

Later on that night after we got home and had dinner, we opened up the cake. It was good, but not great. It was a chocolate cake with vanilla icing and Oreo pieces all over. The chocolate cake tasted like it could be box cake, and the icing was American butter cream made with shortening and powdered sugar, that also had a generic taste to it, but could very well be homemade. I understand the whole box cake thing, since they have so much cake to make for the amount of people that come through there. I probably would only go back to visit with my family, it was way too complicated to get there for cake that is just good. It was great to see it though! 6 out of 10, maily because of the name, canoli and experience.