[Photo: Kathy YL Chan]

With three cupcake bases (chocolate, vanilla, banana) and even more frosting choices, the cupcake combinations ($3) at East Village's Butter Lane are seemingly endless. Chocolate with French Chocolate Buttercream? Vanilla and Cinnamon-Honey Frosting? The options are dizzying. My default go-to combo is the banana cake, kept moist and tender with so many bananas in the batter, and the Maple-Pecan frosting. It's a duo with a noticeably salty kick, from the salted whole pecans—an ideal foil to the intensely maple buttercream.

Come on the early side if it is Chocolate or Vanilla French Buttercream you are after—these two are always the first frostings to sell out.

Butter Lane

123 East 7th Street, New York NY 10009 (map)
212-677-2880
butterlane.com