Take the cake

Photograph: Roxana Marroquin

News of another must-try cupcake may be more grating than the Sex and the City theme song, but hear us out. There are no cooing bachelorettes at Sweet Revenge (62 Carmine St between Seventh Ave and Bedford St, 212-242-2240). No obnoxious line disrupting Village traffic, no apron-clad minxes applying pastel swirls of buttercream in the window. Owner Marlo Scott, a publishing drone turned rebel confectioner, pipes her funky frosting using a St. Honore pastry tip, which deposits it in angular, Mohawk-like waves. In the case of her Crimson & Cream (pictured)—a dense red-velvet cupcake baked around a fresh raspberry core—the frosting is enhanced by tangy cream cheese and a dribble of raspberry coulis. Better still is the namesake Sweet Revenge—white cake baked with a protein-packed dose of old-fashioned Skippy peanut butter. Hiding within the miniature cake is a creamy bead of chocolate ganache; topping it off is PB-spiked buttercream. According to Scott, what distinguishes her cakes from the others is a splash of Mexican vanilla, an extract that lends a nutty, almost almondlike complexity. That flavor is most pronounced in her superlative Spiced Island Carrot Cake, which combines shredded carrots with allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and a good measure of brown sugar, which gives the cake its deep, burnished hue. Scott’s final piss-off to pastry platitudes is the cupcake’s wrapper—a square of raw parchment in place of the traditional accordion cup. Carrie would have a fit. Each cupcake is $3.50.

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