BAKED BY MELISSA

2325 Broadway

New York, NY 10024

(212) 842-0220

"How," thought Melissa, one lazy Sunday, "can I tap into NYC's already saturated cupcake scene? What can I do that hasn't been done?" Inspiration hit her like a sugar rush. "Bite size!"

Yes, cute little baby cupcakes. You just want to eat them right up. Yes you do. Yes you do.

There are about a half dozen Baked By Melissas in Manhattan. I went with Emma to the one near her on the Upper West Side. Emma likes cute little things. She has a cute little studio and a cute little puppy, works with cute little children, wears cute little dresses and, when I first met her, drove a cute little Honda Civic del Sol. It was only natural that she'd  make a bee-line to a bakery churning out cute little cupcakes.

The cupcakes are an inch and a half wide and a half inch deep. So when I say bite size, I'm not just implying small. They're the exact opposite of the ones that are sold at crumbs which can feed a family of four. Baked By Melissa sells them in boxes of up to 100. We ordered a box of six. The standard vanilla-vanilla cupcake is made pretty as the Tie-Dye, a rainbow cupcake with frosting that tastes like any other cupcake would. The Peanut Butter and Jelly is literally a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It tastes just like what you'd make for your kid before the run off to camp. But I can get that at home before I go to camp. So... Emma's favorite was the Cookies and Cream, which was the best we tried. A chocolate cupcake with an Oreo cookie chunk on top and Oreo frosting. Very very good. The runner up was the Cookie Dough, which was a yellow cake cupcake with chocolate frosting and a piece of soft cookie dough baked into the middle. Yum.

There wasn't much of a line when we went in the late afternoon, but when we went out around 8ish, there was a line out the door.

Here's the rub though. While I literally spent almost nothing at Baked By Melissa, it's a terrible terrible terrible value. It would take at least a box of twelve micro-cupcakes to add up to one normal cupcake at Billy's (my fave). That's a $10 cupcake. No one in their right mind would pay ten bucks for a cupcake.