The day before my pudding and cupcake fest at Sugar Sweet Sunshine I realized that the hotel I was staying at was just mere streets away from Buttercup Bake Shop. I spend most of my NYC time in the Village and Chinatown area and just never headed uptown for fooding as much as I should. As you've probably figured by now, puddings are my weakness. I AM WEAK! More specifically, banana puddings. I've had the banana pudding at Magnolia, Billy's Bakery and Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and they are all quite good, though SSS's version just has this wonderful ooomph I just can't place my finger on, aside from the fact that it s a delicious "ooomph!"

The bakery was filled with parents totting around their little kiddies when I arrived at 3pm - perhaps school just got out. I allocated a good ten minutes of my stay eyeing the numerous diabetes inducing desserts but I had my mind set from the start. Banana pudding please. An order is $3.50 which is somewhere between $.50 - $1 more than comparable bakeries...and the cup is smaller!
Just a little. But it makes a difference. Do they think we don't notice? hehe.

This was the fourth time I had banana pudding in three days and I think the pudding parts of my taste buds were starting to wear out. It was everything I anticipated, cool mellow vanilla pudding, soft nilla wafers weaved in with slices of ripe bananas. But it was anticlimactic. It tasted the same as Magnolia. Same as Billy's Bakery. Almost as good as SSS. In the end, is banana pudding just banana pudding? I bet they all use the same recipe (as all the owners stem from Magnolia Bakery). But SSS puts some magical dust in theirs that makes it extra tasty. Maybe I just need to lay off the pudding.

But stay away from the cupcakes. They are DISGUSTING. I don't know what on earth compelled me to buy one, but I will never ever do it again. I don't even like cupcakes that much. The one you're looking at here is the Spice Cupcake, but it should be called the Oh-Crap-This-Is-The-Worst-Thing-Ever cupcake. It was so bad I didn't finish it. And I finish everything. Think dry and crusty frosting that tastes of nothing but sugar. A flavorless, crumbly, probably week old cake defrosted from the long forgotten freezer. It was seriously awful. And I think this is why I don't like cupcakes very much - it so hard to come across a good, or even semi-delicious one. Banana puddings are more reliable :)

Buttercup Bake Shop
141 West 72nd Street
New York, NY 10022
(212) 787-3800