cupcakes and other evil dessert items

i have never been a dessert person. i just simply didn't care for it, really.

until now. i can't figure out why, but lately, i've had the strangest cravings for sweets. whenever i walk by beard papa on my way to nijiya, i devour a cream puff. i find myself buying random cookies: for example i grabbed 3 mini bags of various cookies (which cost $3 EACH!) while standing in line at beard papa. destructor has fallen into the same evil trap lately as well, buying things like panda shaped shortbread cookies on a whim.

so of course we eat dozens of cupcakes during our trip to new york this past weekend. why? whyyyy did i eat so many cupckes?

my favorite by far were the cupcakes from sugar sweet sunshine (label pictured above - obviously the photo was an afterthought post cupcake binge). not only was the frosting made with butter cream (which seems to be the default in nyc?), but there was an almond buttercream topping that is absolutely amazing.

the most memorable one out of this batch was the pistachio cupcake in the top right corner. this is one of the ones with almond butter cream. delicious!!

here is a close up of my beloved pistachio cupcake.

so what about magnolia? of course we went there. i keep hearing about it, so i had to go and find out for myself. at 10pm on a sunday, it probably wasn't busy by new york standards, but we still had to wait in line to pay for our goods, and people came in steadily as we waited.


yum. they were great, but again in my opinion, not as good as the sss cupcakes!


on a separate note, my friend b made some awesome pastries for valentine's day a few weeks ago. she made sampler boxes for all of her friends, and i was lucky enough to get one. she's awesome because i'm sure she stayed up all night making these, but still put them in a beautiful red box for everyone. the treats were so gorgeous and tasty i had to post them:

chocolate cupcakes, a pastry filled with chocolate (i tried to eat only half of this and save the other half for destructor, but i failed), and tiny little heard-shaped cream puffs! the best part was that the cream filling was almond flavored!

i want more! thanks b!