an aggregate of all things Johnson

New York City is back on my good side! On Sunday, Travis and I went for a late (really late, like 4 pm) brunch at Penelope Cafe in Murray Hill. (It was very delicious, by the way. I highly recommend it.) Afterward, I thought I should do my blogger duty and pick up some more cupcakes to objectively review for my loyal “NYC Cupcake Review” followers. ha!

Travis and I stopped by the small Crumbs Bake Shop near Union Square and picked up a chocolate coconut and a “Half-baked” cupcake to review. Crumbs is a relatively new bakery that was started in 2003 by a former attorney and now has over a dozen locations, both in New York and LA.

This was not my first taste of Crumbs cupcakes. Travis and I have picked them up at least twice in the past and I also always manage to have one at the museum cafe when I visit the Met. I don’t remember all of the flavors I have tried, but I know that caramel apple, blackout, brownie, vanilla coconut, and carrot are on the list. In the past, I claimed that Crumbs is my favorite cupcake shop in NY, and this review definitely reinforces that!

Crumbs cupcakes are large – about the size of a large muffin – and they come with tons of frosting and fun toppings. The bakery case reminds me of a gelato shop because of all the goodies you find stuck in the mounded frosting. The flavor selection is amazing and overwhelming, and they always have a
“cupcake of the month” that they are featuring. It is hard for me to choose anything other than the chocolate flavors, but every time that I do I am pleasantly surprised. Of course, for this review I went with chocolate!

Both of the flavors we chose were perfectly moist, with light, sweet icing. The chocolate coconut cupcake was simple with chocolate cake, vanilla buttercream frosting, and coconut sprinkled on top. The “Half-Baked” flavor consisted of chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream filling (yum!), chocolate and cookie dough flavored frostings, and brownie and cookie pieces crumbled on top. So decadent and so delicious!

I tried to avoid giving Crumbs a perfect score, but couldn’t. Everything about the cupcakes was perfect, from the store presentation and the flavor selection to the texture and taste of the cakes. Even the take-out containers are terrific, with separate holders for each cake to keep them from toppling over. The only downside that some people may find is the large size and corresponding price. Each cupcake is $4.50, but they are definitely worth it and are easily large enough for two people to share. Travis and I ate our two cupcakes for dinner and we had a hard time finishing them between the two of us. (Luckily, Travis stepped up and ate the last bits, and he wanted me to add that he thinks these cupcakes are “fantastic.”)

I cannot recommend Crumbs cupcakes highly enough! They are the best cupcakes I have had so far in New York. Yum, yum, yum!

…another “blog”! I have blogs on twitter, tumblr, wordpress and probably a few other places I have forgotten about, so what’s one more?

I took a couple hours today to play around with a few projects I have been watching and wanting to try out. The new blog is hosted on github at http://travisj.github.com. Github is quickly becoming my favorite site on the internet. It is a great place to share code and find cool new projects.

The new blog is built using Jekyll and Compass. You can read more about both of those projects in my introductory post.

For fun, I also added fonts from typekit. I went to school with one of the founders and have been wanting to try out the service for some time. I leave all our design efforts to Rachel, but still had a lot of fun searching through the typekit font library and choosing fonts for the site.

My 29th birthday was last Wednesday and it was a perfect day. It had snowed overnight which meant Travis got to work from home. We started the day with muffins from my favorite bakery, and I spent the day crafting and avoiding email. In the evening, we headed out into the two feet of snow and sleet to get dinner at our favorite, local restaurant, Stone Park Cafe. We went all out with an appetizer, entrees, dessert, and coffee. It was all delicious, and because of the snow, the restaurant was almost empty and very quiet. We sat by the window and watched the snow fall. It was a perfect evening, and it didn’t even end there! I came home and opened too many fabulous presents and cards from my family. Thank you so much to everyone, especially Travis, for making my birthday so special. I know that I am spoiled.

I am working on a huge birthday post (it was a really great day), but I wanted to fit in this thing-a-day post first:

I worked on these two scrapbook pages yesterday, which was my birthday and the 10th day of the thing-a-day challenge. They are for the scrapbook I do with my sister-in-law, Chelsea, and I have been meaning to complete them for a long time. (The Christmas page is for 2008!) I figured I could make some time for fun crafting on my birthday and I am glad I did.

So… I missed my thing-a-day yesterday. To be honest, I was having a bad day. I was trying to work on Swap-bot, but I came down with a bad case of cabin fever. Plus, the Superbowl really gets on my nerves. Finally, Travis broke down and took my out to dinner at Miriam, an Israeli restaurant near our apartment. It was wonderful. The place was empty and I had seafood risotto. A great start to my birthday week!

For day 8 of thing-a-day, I made this matchbox for my February Love Matchbox Swap. Today is the last day to send your swap package, so I cut it a little close to the deadline. I was going to send one of the previous matchboxes I had made for Etsy Craft Night, but I decided I wanted to make something new for my partner. She likes bright and bold colors. I hope she likes her package!