Magnolia Bakery

I've been suffering from baking blues lately. In December we got a new oven and since then, every cake I bake simply implodes. In the oven it looks all crisp and voluptuous but as soon I take it out, it simply caves in. Faulty technology or a diabolical plot to stop me from fattening up my sweet pea?

Anyway, I’m now on a quest for the ultimate experience in blissful baking. For the next few weeks, I’m going to let the world’s top bakeries guide me with their full proof recipes so that even a fickle piece of machinery can’t keep me from nirwana.

First up is the world famous (due to several cameo's in Sex and the City) Magnolia Bakery in New York. It opened in 1996 at 401 Bleecker Street and is renowned for its cupcakes and old-fashioned Depression era icebox cakes which I'm dying to try. This bakery is so famous in fact that they have to limit cupcake purchases to 12 per customer.

Allysa Torey and Jennifer Appel are the owners and authors of the glorious Magnolia Bakery Cookbook which will hopefully restore my faith in creative confectionary concoctions. They started off as an ordinary bakery but making bread proved to be impractical due to time and space constraints so they moved on to smaller sensations.

The cupcakes were born in early fall of 1996 and personally started the 1990s cupcake craze. They were Allysa's brainchild and the result of batter that would otherwise have gone to waste. Originally they were just plain vanilla cakes with vanilla butter cream icing tinted pink. Now they are available in a wide variety of flavors and colors and soon they will also appear in my very own kitchen.