Cupcakes in the City – Molly’s Cupcakes

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Cupcakes in the City, round two! For those of you just joining this cupcake adventure, I’ll be focusing on the old fashion chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. Read about our first Cupcakes in the City stop here.

This time we headed over to Molly’s Cupcakes. I’d read a bunch of articles about cupcakes around the city, and Molly’s came up a few times. People kept raving about the cupcakes, saying they were better than most places in the city so I had to put Molly’s to the test. Hearing that Molly’s had a service called “create-a-cupcake” where you tell them cake flavor you want, what type of frosting, and you can top it off with an assortment of toppings, I knew I had to visit sooner than later.

Build your own cupcake at Mollys Cupcakes
Build your own cupcake at Mollys Cupcakes

Details:
Location –  228 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10014
Cupcake Price – $2.50/each
The bakery was, in my opinion,  a hipster joint. From the workers,  customers, to the decor, everything just screamed hipster. Now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s definitely a different vibe than the other bakeries I’ve been to in the city.

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Hipster swings in Mollys Cupcakes

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Cupcake Logistics:
Appearance: Plain and simple with no frills. The cake itself glistened with moisture. Molly’s “Build Your Own Cupcake” isn’t a pretty cake, but some of their cupcakes and desserts on display did have more attention to detail and were cuter looking.
Frosting:  Sweet and thick, with a strong flavor. There’s no subtlety here. I tried a cupcake with vanilla frosting, and one with chocolate. I highly recommend the chocolate frosting!
Cake flavor/consistency:  Very moist, which can be seen in a positive and negative light. The cake was so moist that when you took a bite with frosting, you could almost not tell the two apart since they both were of the same mushy consistency.

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The cupcakes you can build yourself were kept in Tupperware containers behind the counter. Being kept in such an environment, perhaps without cooling properly left the cakes very wet to the touch, leaving behind moisture stains in the cardboard boxes they came in, something I haven’t experienced previously at other popular bakeries. Grabbing the cupcakes (in their wrappers) was slippery and not the best experience.

I was hoping for the building experience to be special and fun. I had seen a review online that made them sound magical, saying you got to watch the staff create your cupcake right in front of your eyes. The worker I interacted with was far from magical, and seemed disinterested. The featured sprinkle station was far from exciting. I was hoping for several cool types of sprinkles that I could spoon onto my cupcakes, instead, you got what you see below…not even traditional sprinkles in sight!

Sprinkle station at Mollys Cupcakes in NYC
Sprinkle station at Mollys Cupcakes in NYC

In the end, the cupcakes tasted fine, but the frosting was a bit heavy for me, which is saying something since frosting is usually my favorite part of any cake. If you ever find yourself on Bleecker Street in NYC, poke your head in! You’re sure to find something sweet to enjoy.

Sign outside Mollys Cupcakes in NYC
Sign outside Mollys Cupcakes in NYC

 

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Can you really go sock-free with Foot Petals?

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If you’ve read my Tieks post, you know that I’m a fan of the flats but find that they tend to carry an odor after a period of time. In the post I mentioned finding a new product called Foot Petals: Sock-Free Saviors and that I was going to put them to the test, which is exactly what I’ve been doing.

Foot Petals: Sock-Free Saviors are shoe inserts that are removable and machine washable. You can’t go wrong with something that you can easily remove and wash!

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When you get the pack (2 insoles) you’ll see there are different cut lines on the insoles so you can trim them to fit appropriately. I went with the small cut line and found that was still a teeny tiny bit too  large still, so I trimmed just a little bit more off. From there, insert them into your shoes!

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My journey began with using the inserts with my Keds. I’ve previously been wearing my Keds with what I call micro socks, and while those worked out ok, sometimes you would see the black fabric poke up above the shoe – not a great look. I figured I would give these insoles a try in my Keds because then I would get the comfort of something like a sock, but without needing to wear them or worry about them showing awkwardly. With my Keds, I have no complaints. The sock-free saviors did their job, and my feet felt fresh and were odor free 🙂

Since my first experiment went so well I figured it was time to try the inserts with shoes that really needed them – my Tieks.

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Odor: My feet didn’t carry a bad odor! Previously, when I wore my Tieks, my feet would end up getting all hot and sweaty, leading to some unpleasant smells. Due to this, I would have to immediately dunk my feet into the tub after taking the flats off every evening. However, this time around, my feet only really smelled like the insoles themselves (which just smells like plastic). No need to wash my feet – phew!

Comfort: In my Keds, the Foot Petals work great. However, with slimmer shoes like my Tieks, I found there was too much bulk/cushion which caused my feet to feel very squished and a bit uncomfortable. When I removed my Tieks, my feet had deep indents in them for quite a while due to losing some of the roominess in the shoe. I might try to stretch my Tieks out some more with heavy socks to see if that will help loosen things a bit and let me continue to use the insoles. If that doesn’t work, I may try to see if I can cut down the “bulk” a little but I’m not if that’ll be doable.

In the end, I feel Foot Petals: Sock-Free Saviors are a great and affordable investment, especially for sneakers that are cut low on the foot/ankle. I’m not sure they are a great fit for traditional flats, but I’m not going to give up quite yet!

 

 

 

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Cupcakes in the City – Billy’s Bakery

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Who doesn’t enjoy a cupcake? They’re portable, cute, and just the right size – no guilt here!

This is the first installment of a new series called Cupcakes in the City. I’ll be exploring local bakeries here in NYC to see who has some of the yummiest cupcakes in town. My office is conveniently located near several bakeries, so that’s where I’ll start my cupcake exploration. For tasting purposes, I’ll be focusing on the old fashion chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. My boyfriend will be our vanilla taster since I’m not really a fan, while I devour the chocolate cupcakes.

The first stop on Cupcakes in the City is Billy’s Bakery.

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Billy’s Bakery – NYC

Details:
Location – 184 9th Ave, New York, NY 10011
Cupcake Price – $3.25/each
The bakery itself is really cute. It’s small, but there’s plenty of room to walk around, check out the two display cases, and there’s even a couple small tables with chairs. At Billy’s a vanilla cupcake is called a “Daisy.” Besides Daisy and Chocolate cupcakes, they had red velvet, lemon, a gluten free option, and a couple other speciality flavors. You can find a variety of cookies, cakes, and pastries at Billy’s as well.

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Cupcake Logistics 

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Appearance: 
Clean and simple with a sprinkle of sprinkles
Frosting: Creamy with a light chocolate taste. The cake to frosting ratio was just right.
Cake flavor/consistency:  The cakes didn’t have an overwhelming flavor of vanilla or chocolate. In regards to moisture, I wouldn’t say the cakes were dry or overly moist, but somewhere in the middle.

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For me, the frosting really made the cupcake. It had a stronger flavor and really brought everything together.

Would I go back to Billy’s bakery? Definitely! I can’t really complain about anything. I enjoyed the cupcake, and it didn’t leave me feel guilty or sick to my stomach like some very sweet cupcakes can.

Until next time!

<3 Cupcakes in the City

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Makeup free at work

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My cat Pepper – looking as sleepy as I feel.

Let’s talk about makeup for a second. I’m not a huge makeup person, never have been. However, I do love my mascara and wear it basically everyday, with the occasional liquid eye liner added in for extra effect, but that’s the extent of my look.

Today, for the first time ever, I forgot to put mascara on for work and found myself in a slight panic. Maybe it’s because I only got 4-5 hours of sleep last night, but for some reason I found myself worrying about what everyone in the office was going to think. Was someone going to point it out? Would someone think I looked ill?

Now that I sit here, I wonder to myself, why do we women allow ourselves to worry so much about everyone’s perception of us? I’m a rather self conscious and shy person, so I think that plays into things now and then, but I wish I didn’t worry so much about what everyone thinks. I’m going to work on.

Here’s to makeup free workdays and feeling comfortable in your own skin. I challenge you to forget your makeup too.

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DIY – Watercolor Flamingo

I’ve been big into watercolors lately. During my spare time on the weekends, or after a long stressful day at work, I love to pull out my Koi Watercolors Pocket Field Sketch Box and paint. I’ve been working on a personal series of paintings for my apartment, focusing on “under the sea” as a theme. I’ll be sharing a bit about that in the near future.

When my mom saw my sea life paintings she fell in love with them, and wondered if I could make her a flamingo painting. Flamingos are my mom’s favorite. I don’t know why or how they came to be her favorite, but they are. I’ve never created a flamingo before, so here’s to a new challenge!

Let’s start by drawing out the shape of the flamingo’s neck and body with a wet brush, no paint.

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Once we have water down on the paper, it’s time to add some color. I mixed red with a lot of water to dilute the color.

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Continue to add paint to the body of the bird, adding in some feathers with deeper hues of red or purple. Once you’re happy with the body and neck of  the flamingo, it’s time to add legs. Flamingos are known for standing on one leg, so that’s how we’ll make our flamingo stand.

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With a neck, body, feathers, and legs, our flamingo is almost complete! You’ll notice in the picture below that I haven’t given the flamingo a face yet. I wanted the paint around the face to dry before I brought in a harsher color for the beak and eye.

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Mix purple, blue, and a spec of black together, adding in a bit of water to make the color not so harsh. Then, slowly create an outline for the beak, avoiding the pink parts of the head.

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Add an eye with a fine point brush – just one small dab will do, and you should end up with the following.

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After adding in my beak, I felt the face was a little too skinny, so I added a little more pink to provide fullness to the face. And with that, under 15 minutes you have a pink flamingo ready for framing!

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Happy painting!

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