Longform history of Sprinkles Cupcakes on the occasion of the cupcakery's sudden closure in December 2025.
Category: Blog
Cupcake anniversaries of 2025
Three pivotal moments in modern cupcake history are marking anniversaries in 2025. Sprinkles Cupcakes turns 20, the "Sex and the City" cupcake scene turns 25, and the "Lazy Sunday" YouTube video turns 20. All had seismic impact on the rise of 21st-century cupcakes.
The intersection of ‘Dear New York, I Love You’ and Magnolia Bakery
Artist Ria Sim, author of Dear New York, I Love You, draws 11th and Bleecker Streets in Greenwich Village. Sim's caption serendipitously connects the artwork to the legends of Magnolia Bakery and Sex and the City.
A cupcake for Barbra
Celebrating the star's birthday with the Barbra Streisand Cupcake by Sprinkles. Noting the memoirist's ongoing search for nostalgic cake.
New packaged snack cakes are variations on the classic
Oreo Cakesters taste test and preparation for Hostess mini cupcakes for National Oreo Day and Oreos' 113th birthday.
Cupcakes, Carter, Catastrophe
The 9 Jan. 2025 National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter, the L.A. fires, and cupcakes are linked in this literary quote: “Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake,” writes novelist Dean Koontz.
New product taste test: Chocolate cupcake cups and pickle cupcakes
Summer 2024 fieldwork to research Sprinkles cupcake cups and Baked by Melissa x Claussen pickle cupcakes.
Celebrity endorsed cupcakes
Celebrities profess their cupcake love in spring 2024.
Be the resistance: Drive with cake
"Drive with Cake" is a truth-bearing highway sign that will be banned per new federal government guidance.
Oceans away
Baking Swedish cake for Chef Marcus Samuelsson's birthday after reading his memoir, Yes, Chef.
Cupcakes as fashion statements
The dessert components of the Museum at FIT 2023 exhibition Food & Fashion.
Offices sans birthday cake
In a LinkedIn post, career coach Robynn Storey provokes reactions to the demise of the office birthday cake.
Marketing cupcakes to fancy foodists
In a sign of the changing cupcake industry, Magnolia Bakery and Crumbs exhibit at the 2023 Summer Fancy Food Show in search of wholesale partners.
Cupcakes attend ‘Sex and the City’ silver anniversary party
The Magnolia Bakery Carrie cupcake appears in “And Just Like That … It’s Been 25 Years, A Sex and the City Experience” in New York in June 2023.
Keystone State cupcakes
Consuming cupcakes and American history at 2023 VegFest in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
First festival of cupcakes
Reporting from the K104.7 Cupcake Festival in New York's Hudson Valley, May 2023.
Finding hospitality at the House of Cupcakes
National Give Someone a Cupcake Day fieldwork at the House of Cupcakes during the 2023 Bayonne, N.J., Food Truck Festival.
Cupcakes in your grocery cart
Once associated with upscale boutiques, brand-name cupcakes are retailing at grocery stores. Cookies and/or cupcakes from the Original Crumbs Bake Shop and Magnolia Bakery are landing on grocery store shelves in the northeast and beyond.
Georgetown Cupcake closes in NYC and LA
Georgetown Cupcake closed its New York and L.A. stores in the second half of 2022. These are the first stores the company has closed since its 2008 founding, reducing the retail footprint by one-third.
Cupcakes befriend blondies
Though they don’t speak as forcefully as cupcakes, blondies have captured the attention of pro-cupcake celebrities surveying the New York bakery landscape. Actress Sarah Jessica Parker put Magnolia cupcakes in “Sex and the City” and is likely responsible for the Fat Witch Bakery blondies in episode 8 of “And Just Like That.” Sprinkles founder and bestselling author Candace Nelson is advising a New York boutique bakery called Blondery.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 