Butter Lane bakery, one of the sweetest spots in New York, knows that frosting is key to a great cupcake. That’s why the bakery offers just three kinds of cupcakes—chocolate, vanilla, and banana—but you can choose between 15 different frostings! From Sea Salted Chocolate to Honey Cinnamon to Strawberry, Butter Lane’s creations take basic cupcakes to the next level. To learn their frosting secrets, Lurpak^® attended a “Cupcakes 101” class, where we found lots of great tips for the home baker!

The class of about 15 students was divided into three groups, each armed with a standing mixer. Following Butter Lane’s recipes, each group made one of three simple frostings: chocolate, vanilla, and cream cheese. Then we divided each bowl of frosting in half, and by mixing in a few simple ingredients, turned three frostings into six. Vanilla became raspberry, cream cheese became cinnamon, and chocolate became chocolate peanut butter. Suddenly we had an array of frostings to mix and match with Butter Lane’s cupcakes!

Our instructor showed us how to frost like a pro and create the Butter Lane signature swirl. However, it’s harder than it looks: after dabbing on a ball of frosting, you need to rotate the cupcake in one hand while tapping the top with a frosting spatula. We definitely need to keep practicing at home! Of course, that means making some more cupcakes, maybe some of these Lurpak^® Chocolate Buttermilk cupcakes…yum!

Here are some of the great baking tips that Lurpak^® picked up at Cupcakes 101:

1.  Get it all out. When baking, be sure to scrape all your bowls clean, leaving no ingredient behind. Recipes list exact quantities, so when you don’t add everything, the proportions become skewed.

2. The beat goes on. You have to be careful not to overbeat cake batter or you will develop gluten, which leads to a tougher cake. But because there is no flour in frosting, you can keep beating as long as you like. In fact, the more you beat, the fluffier your frosting will become!

3. Better butter, better batter. This bakery loves butter—there’s a reason it’s in the bakeshop’s name! Butter Lane knows that it is important not to skimp on high quality ingredients. A great tasting butter makes a difference in all baked goods, but it will be especially noticeable in a recipe like frosting, which requires only a few ingredients. When you can taste each ingredient, quality counts! Lurpak^® is the perfect choice for making gourmet frostings with a luscious texture and full flavor.  Give it a try next time you make cupcakes!

4. Add a splash of cream cheese. One of Butter Lane’s secrets is to incorporate a small amount of cream cheese into all their buttercreams, not just the cream cheese frosting.  The extra cream cheese adds smoothness and tang, and it keeps the frosting from getting too sweet.

Baking may be all about chemistry and proportions, but at Butter Lane, we learned that frosting is where you can let your imagination take over.  Mix in coffee, peanut butter, your favorite jam—whatever you love—and add it in small amounts until the frosting tastes just right.  After Cupcakes 101, Lurpak^® knows that the secret to making fabulous cupcakes is making them just the way you want them!

Want to see the Lurpak^® commercial with Butter Lane bakery? See below: Lurpak^® and Butter Lane.

Just ask the over 500 people who stood in line for up to an hour on Wednesday night to attend the CupcakeCamp cupcake festival here, outside of Boston.

“Cupcakes are here to stay,” said attendee Danielle. She had traveled from neighboring Brookline, Mass., to attend the two-hour festival. She spoke to Lurpak^® amid bites from a mini bananas foster cupcake from a local vendor. “Cupcakes can be so moist, and there are so many flavors to choose from, even strange ones like Frito, bacon and syrup, or Guinness are delicious!”

Her sentiments – and her eager attempts to sample as many cupcakes as possible at this free extravaganza at the Somerville Armory on Wednesday night – were echoed again and again. The event, which was first held last year, featured sugary spreads by over a dozen local bakeries, each with its own distinctive flavor or theme. A handful of amateur bakers also brought their goods to the showcase.

Bakers and eaters filled the Somerville Armory for the event.

For Lurpak^®, the prevailing takeaway of the evening – outside of the sugar high – was that the best ingredients make for the best cupcakes. Again and again, the participating vendors – which included Babycakes, Cupcake MoJo, C-Cups Cupcakes, Mix Bakery, Sweet, Sugar Bakery, Treat Cupcake Bar, and We Make Cupcakes, among others – emphasized the importance of using fresh, good-quality ingredients.

What ingredient matters most? Depends whom you ask – at Cupcakory, it’s the pure vanilla extract that makes all the difference; for the baker at C-Cups, it’s “imported European butter”, and for the folks at We Make Cupcakes, it’s nothing short of “love.”

In terms of pure skill and classic mastery of the cupcake craft, Sweet, with three locations in the Boston area, took the cake with its Madagascar vanilla bean cake with homemade buttercream vanilla frosting, speckled with dots of vanilla bean and stacked high with a thick-piped frost.

Lurpak^®'s favorite cupcakes - pure vanilla bean - from Sweet.

A number of more gimmicky trends also became apparent – cocktail-inspired blends (margarita with a lime squeeze, Guinness with chocolate ganache, Irish Car Bomb), banana cupcakes (roasted banana with cinnamon, toasted coconut, or peanut butter), and, of course, the seductive Southern charms of the red velvet (with or without cream cheese frosting).

The Cupcake Bar even custom-mixes frosting to order – we took ours with Reese’s peanut butter cups, white chocolate pieces, and vanilla buttercream.

After two hours of tasting, talking, and learning from the bakers and eaters in attendance, one thing was clear – this community of creative cooks and perfectionists has been galvanized by their passion for baking.

“It’s very generous to bring cupcakes to share with the community for a good cause,” said Deb, from Somerville But she admitted, “At the same time, though, a cupcake is a very selfish treat. You can eat the whole thing with zero obligation to share.”

Bakers worked hard to keep their stations stocked!

Lurpak^® left the event with a head full of new recipe ideas – be sure to check our website, www.LurpakUSA.com, for new baking ideas when you are feeling inspired. Or share your cupcake ideas with us on our Facebook page!

Top 5 Cupcakes Lurpak^® is Dying to Try

1. Earl Grey & Honey Cupcake with Purple Bergamot Frosting – Cakeology
2. Butter Pecan, double stacked! – Sugar
3. S’Mores with Graham Cracker Crust – Mix Bakery
4. Vanilla-Vanilla, the classic – Cupcakory
5. Roasted Banana with Honey Cinnamon Frosting – We Make Cupcakes

Top 5 Trends from CupcakeCamp

1. Cocktail-Inspired Recipes
2. Banana Cupcakes
3. Extra-Thick Buttercream Frosting
4. Pure Vanilla
5. Red Velvet

Top 5 Most Innovative Cupcakes
Want to see more photos? Visit our Facebook page!

1. Bumble-Bee with Honey Crunch
2. Bacon and Syrup
3. Coffee and Donut
4. Vegan Toasted Coconut
5. Make-Your-Own Frosting Bar

Top 3 Ingredients

1. Pure Vanilla Extract or Vanilla Beans
2. Quality European Butter
3. Love!

1. Always preheat the oven to the recommended temperature before baking a tart or pie. When dough is made with a large amount of butter, it is best starting with a preheated 425°F oven and baking the pie for 15 minutes. Then reduce the temperature. This will help to stabilize the pastry and keep it from slipping while baking.

2. When “cutting in” fat, you want to keep small pea-size dots of fat in the dough. As they melt, the moisture in the fat will evaporate, leaving flaky layers in the pastry.

3. Chill the dough at least 30 minutes before rolling it out. This will relax the protein (the gluten), and the dough will hold its final shape better. If the dough is not sufficiently chilled and you roll too soon, the dough will be too elastic and pull back as you roll it.

Every baker should have a great crust in their repertoire. We think it’s pate brisée, an incredibly versatile crust that can be used when baking either sweet or savory tarts. “Pate brisée” is known as a 3-2-1 dough. Measured by weight it is: three parts flour, two parts butter, and one part water. It is a “short dough,” which means it has a high ratio of butter “fat” to flour, which makes it is crumbly, flaky, and remarkably rich in flavor. This dough can be made with or without a pinch of sugar, but when making a dessert crust, adding a little sugar to the basic recipe helps to keep the crust tender. Always handle crust dough lightly: a tough crust results from over-mixing the dough and developing the gluten. Gluten is great for bread; not so wonderful when making a tart or pie crust. If you feel the dough toughen as you work, let it rest in the refrigerator for a half hour.

Splurge on: Fresh, high-quality butter. It’s a key part of a cake, cookie, or quick bread, so this is the time of year to pull out all the stops and use the best. Lurpak^®® is double-churned so it creams easily, even when cold, for smoother results.

Splurge on: Real extracts. Imitations are diluted, so you don’t get the same strength or flavor quality. You don’t use a lot per recipe, so you can make it last, but the best makes a noticeable difference in the taste.

Save on: Cookie sheets. Because of the high butter content of cookies, using non-stick cookie sheets is not as important.