Cupcake Cafe Cookbook

A uniquely idiosyncratic New York establishment, The Cupcake Café is a cozy mecca for lovers of all kinds of delicious homemade baked goods, including muffins, scones, coffee cakes, waffles, pies, sticky buns, and doughnuts. But it is best known for its fanciful cakes and cupcakes, elaborately decorated with homemade butter cream frosting. From many-tiered wedding cakes to tiny cupcakes covered in fresh fields of flowers, to sheet cakes embellished in vivid colors with virtually any scene you can describe or imagine, The Cupcake Café's baked goods are renowned for tasting even better than they look.

In The Cupcake Café Cookbook, Ann Warren shares all her secrets, teaching the home cook not only how to bake all of the Café's ambrosial products, but also how to decorate with butter cream in her own wildly fanciful style. Photographs in color and black-and-white, as well as detailed instructions for mixing colors, shaping flowers, and creating balance, bring even the most elaborate decorating techniques well within the ability of any home baker.

Writing not only with incomparable expertise, but also with the irreverence and wit that characterize everything she does, Ann Warren has re-created the entire unique Cupcake Café experience in book form.

Ann Warren and her sister and coauthor, Joan Lilly, were born in Brooklyn, New York. Ann studied at the Art Students League, the Brooklyn Museum School, and the National Academy, but she credits the High School of Art and Design with teaching her how to write on a cake. She met her husband, Michael, now her partner at The Cupcake Café, when they were both working at the Well-Bred Loaf. Joan has a B.A. in anthropology from Boston University, a B.A. in English from Hunter College, and an M.S.W. from Fordham University. She lives in New York City and has worked in the publishing field for many years.