[Photo: Kathy YL Chan]

If the lines at the recently opened Sprinkles Cupcakes mean anything, it's that the cupcake craze is far from over. With locations around the country, the cupcakery that originated in Beverly Hills opened its eleventh shop just a skip away from Bloomingdale's. Red Velvet is the top seller at Sprinkles, but I'm partial to the banana cupcake. Chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet cupcakes are easy to find in this town; but a good banana cupcake? Now those are much harder to come by. Billy's Bakery used to make a great banana cupcake, but that's gone downhill significantly in the past year. Sprinkles does the banana cupcake justice with a tender, fresh banana cake. It's slightly more dense than their other cupcakes, but in all right ways, plenty moist and appropriately sweet. They offer it with a vanilla or bittersweet chocolate frosting; I'm usually a chocolate person, but go with vanilla in this case as to not overwhelm the banana cake.

Sprinkles Cupcakes

780 Lexington Avenue, New York, 10065 (map)
212-207-8375
sprinkles.com

About the author: Originally from Honolulu, Kathy YL Chan writes A Passion For Food, where she chronicles her eats and travels adventures between Hawai'i, New York and beyond. She firmly believes that there is always room for dessert.