Sugar = War

(I didn't write this, but it says all that needs to be said regarding the cupcake war in NYC)

Flour Power
Suzanne Chetwin

In New York, they take cupcakes very seriously indeed.

It’s barely more than a bun. Not a sticky, licky, brandy-soaked fruit-filled slice of heaven, or a sumptuous chocolate sensation. Not even a roaring, rambunctious pudding decorated with a rich, creamy, drippingly sweet custard.

It’s a cupcake: butter, flour, eggs, milk, vanilla. A simple cupcake. However, the instant Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) from the television series Sex and the City took a bite of this humble confection, the phrase “icing it” took on a new, more sinister meaning. New York’s cupcake war was declared. I know this because, as a tourist on a television and movie location bus tour of New York City, I have become a bit player (no speaking part required, only a wallet) in this battle. I should have known something was amiss when the tour guide (a budding actress) told us the driver’s name was Baker. But back up the bus for a moment. The ingredients for this bitchery date back 10 years, to when the Magnolia Bakery opened on Bleecker St in the West Village. The little bakery that knew it could quickly did. There were queues. The proprietors strictly enforced their rule of a maximum 12 cupcakes per person.

Their cupcakes started appearing in fashionable periodicals. So it was only a matter of time (slightly more than a New York minute) before that other style institution, Sex and the City, came calling. That was in 2000, but by then the Magnolia partners had quarrelled over the direction of their cupcake business and split. One set up rival cupcake shop Buttercup across the street. Now, as our guide cheerfully tells us, Magnolia is the only cake shop in town where a bouncer greets customers. What followed Sex, naturally in this most filmed city in the world, were bus tours. Hordes of them. People like me worshipping at the altar of the Manolo Blahnik shop Carrie stopped at before slipping into Magnolia for cupcakes. But while it’s Magnolia we come to gawp at, it’s Buttercup cupcakes that are eaten. It’s the strict 12 cupcakes rule that has been Magnolia’s undoing. And, in another twist, tour operators sometimes insinuate that the two warring cupcake bakers were once lesbian lovers (“not on my watch, of course”). As in any war there’s also the cost to life and dignity. A New York Times article quoted a woman who lived near Magnolia complaining that her dog had become obese by eating discarded cupcake wrappers. Other cupcake shops seeded by the managers of Magnolia and Buttercup have taken root all over Manhattan. There’s Billy’s in Chelsea, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, Baked, Happy Happy Happy, Polka Dot Cake Studio and Cupcake Caboose, Make My Cake, Babycakes, Cupcake Café and Little Cupcake. Last year a baker tried to open the Little Cupcake Bakeshop in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, but the owners of Manhattan’s Little Cupcake and Buttercup took legal action to shut it down. The New York magazine quoted Little Cupcake Bakeshop owner Libertini saying: “I have a right to open a bakery.” And Buttercup owner (formerly of Magnolia) Jennifer Apel said of the cupcake craze: “I created it.” Her franchise manager (yes, they are going nationwide) Larry Feierstein was far more modest: “She’s like the cupcake godmother. If you did a family tree of cupcakes in New York, she spawned out the seven families. She’s the Don Corleone of cupcakes.”