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Beverly Hills Cupcake Shop Sprinkles Heads to Upper East Side

By Amy Zimmer | April 22, 2011 12:38pm
Banana Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting from Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills
Banana Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting from Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills
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Flickr/Muy Yum

By Amy Zimmer

DNAinfo News Editor

UPPER EAST SIDE — Just as Magnolia Bakery expanded to Los Angeles, a Beverly Hills import is coming to Manhattan.

Sprinkles — which built a devoted following of Hollywood stars including Katie Holmes, Oprah Winfrey and Jessica Alba and long lines at its South Santa Monica Boulevard shop since 2005 — touts itself as the world's first cupcake-only bakery.

As its founder, Candace Nelson, spends time as a judge on the Food Network's Cupcake Wars, she's also developing more new outposts.

Sprinkles is bringing is handcrafted treats — made with sweet cream butter, bittersweet Belgian chocolate, pure Madagascar Bourbon vanilla and fresh bananas, carrots and strawberries — near Bloomingdale's at 780 Lexington Ave., between East 60th and East 61st streets. The shop is slated to open on May 13, according to the bakery's website.

This is what happens when Sprinkles mixes marshmallow fluff, chocolate ganache and cupcakes.
This is what happens when Sprinkles mixes marshmallow fluff, chocolate ganache and cupcakes.
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Flickr/Katie Laird

Sprinkles already has several shops in California, Texas, Chicago, Arizona and Washington, D.C.

"This will probably be the most expensive cupcake you will buy, but it is worth it," one Californian wrote on Yelp.

"Some people say that their cupcakes are too sweet," another wrote. "It's a cupcake, what do you want it salty? That's like saying bacon is unhealthy. We know this."

Sprinkles' history is not all sugary sweet. The company trademarked its "modern dot" and filed several lawsuits against dot-using competitors, according to reports.

The bakery's new home on Lexington Avenue had been occupied by a 65-year-old Italian restaurant, Gino's. Writer Gay Talese lamented the loss of Gino's with "its tomato-red wallpaper printed with three hundred and fourteen leaping zebras, and its determinedly uncreative chefs" in the New Yorker last year.