Interview with Butter Lane Cupcakes

Meet our girls at Butter Lane Cupcakes- Maria Baugh, Pam Nelson, & Linda Lea.  They are a legit trio of go-getters!  Co-Owner Pam traded in her career as a financial analyst  for sweet success.  She now holds down the fort by managing the day-to-day operations at Butter Lane.  Linda,  is the creative genius behind Butter Lane’s phenomenal flavors, and, in her spare time, she is the Executive Producer of Food Network‘s breakout hit, “Chopped.”  Maria, oversees marketing and PR for Butter Lane. She is also the Managing Editor of Food Network Magazine.

Butter Lane Cupcakes  focuses on pure ingredients like real vanilla beans, pure cocoa and dark chocolate.   They’re giving foodies something to sink their teeth into besides straight sugar.  Butter Lane says it best-  “We think of it as cupcakes for grownups”. Let’s continue to cross our fingers that Butter Lane will spread towards a city near you.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned about running a business in the food industry?

Maria @ Butter Lane: Quality ingredients are key! The better the ingredients the better the product. Great customer service is also extremely important.

Describe your average customer and their favorite cupcake flavors?

Maria @ Butter Lane: The Elvis is one of our most popular flavors—peanut butter icing on banana cupcake with a mini-marshmallow garnish. People also really love the vanilla French buttercream and chocolate French buttercream icings. They’re a little different from our the American buttercream because we make them with egg whites, cane sugar instead of confectioners sugar and butter. The texture is more like a meringue or glace. The average customer is someone who loves food and appreciates good ingredients and a high standard of quality.

What is your favorite cupcake?

Maria @ Butter Lane: My personal favorite (this week) is maple pecan icing on chocolate cake.

We are looking forward to trying your recipe of Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla French Buttercream, featured on Martha Stewart.  How did Martha discover this fabulous recipe?

Maria @ Butter Lane: She heard about us and they asked us to send samples. The chocolate with vanilla French was one of the samples we sent. We were thrilled when they asked us to be on the show and make the cupcakes with Martha!

To achieve perfect cupcake recipes, you worked closely with a professional chef where he would refine a standard cupcake recipe multiple times.  How did you know the recipe was “the one”?

Maria @ Butter Lane: In addition to coming up with the perfect recipe for taste and texture for both the cupcakes and the icing, it was also really important to us that we come up with a way to reduce the amount of sugar in the recipes. We wanted to create an icing that wasn’t so sweet it hurt your teeth. We were able to cut the amount of sugar in half compared to traditional recipes. And we added more flavor to make up for it. Using real vanilla beans helps because the flavor is so intense. Our favorite phrase is “less sugar, more flavor.”

Which celebrities have visited Butter Lane Cupcakes?

Maria @ Butter Lane: We’ve had some great celebs in the shop—Charlize Theron, Chris Noth (Mr. Big!), Neil Patrick Harris, America Ferrera, Zachary Quinto, Ted Allen, and just last night Questlove, the drummer for the Roots!

Exciting upcoming news or announcements for Butter Lane Cupcakes?

Maria @ Butter Lane: We opened our second location, in Park Slope Brooklyn, back in June. That’s probably it for big announcements for a while!

What are your favorite dessert blogs for inspiration?

Maria @ Butter Lane: We are huge fans of Cupcakes Take the Cake and of course Best Friends for Frosting!

What is your biggest piece of advice to entrepreneurs?

Maria @ Butter Lane: Owning and running a small business is like playing a giant game of Whack-a-Mole every day. Just when you think you’ve taken care of everything, all is under control, you’ve found a solution for every problem, a new problem (or two or three!) will pop up out of nowhere, usually all at the same time. It’s fun and challenging and there are a lot of great days and great experiences, but it’s exhausting work. But we wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Butter Lane Cupcakes reaches out to their community by offering Cupcake Decorating Classes.

Yes- Butter Lane Cupcakes has “Frosting Shots” on their menu.

Visit Butter Lane Cupcakes at one of their New York Locations:

New York- East Village Address:

(212) 677-2880

New York- Park Slope Address:

Note: Some of these sweet photos were taken by: Savory-Bites