To celebrate the opening of their new Larchmont location, Crumbs Bakeshop will be giving 1,000 free cupcakes beginning at 8:00 am on Friday. Free cupcakes! Crumbs Bake Shops are designed and inspired by old-time candy shops. Their first bake shop opened its doors in March of 2003 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan by co-founders Mia & Jason Bauer. There are currently six locations in New York and one in Beverly Hills. There are......

Photo by nailmaker via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr 22-year-old Alan Hamai from Redondo Beach had just been awarded his degree in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and was celebrating when he fell to his death from the third floor of a dorm building. Hamai is the second student from SoCal to die at UCB this month; two weeks ago Christopher Wootton was fatally stabbed after a party on campus. The folks at......

Photo by S.C. Asher via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr READING Janet Sarbanes and Marisa Silver read excerpts from their new short story books Army of One and Babe in Paradise. Both authors will be available for signings after the readings. 6 p.m. // The Hammer Museum // 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles // (310) 443-7000 // $5 TEA If haven’t finished celebrating Mother’s Day, stop by Vroman’s Bookstore for a special......

You're going to be thinking scrumptious cupcakes, but don't even try... you're too cool for that, right? That's Johnny Cupcake for ya. Coming soon to a Melrose Ave. storefront soon. Johnny Cupcakes LA shoppe SNEAK PEEK 1 from Johnny Cupcakes on Vimeo.......

The first annual Cupcake Challenge on May 18th will put the lip-smacking in a foodie smackdown. In this event sponsored by CozmoDeck, Fiji Water, and K and L Wine Merchants, 13 of the best local cupcake bakeries--cupcakeries, if you will--are putting on their oven mitts and throwing down the best they have to offer in the hopes of determining whose cupcake is the tops in town. The event is open to the public, because you......

After discussing the various available Easter cupcakes yesterday, we just had to check them out for ourselves at Yummy Bakery. The Egg Hunt, Pictured on the left, is a coconut cupcake topped with a coconut buttercream and decorated with the standard green-tinted coconut and jelly beans. Although the Egg Hunt is cute as a button, I have to admit I much prefer the chocolate with cream cheese coconut topping. You can always buy a bag......

Yummy Cupcakes in Burbank is serving up Easter specialties this week - Carrot Cream Cheese, Easter Bunny, Easter Basket, and the somewhat unusual Egg Hunt. This LAist favorite bakes up an irresistible "Old School" cupcake, a riff on Hostess Cupcakes. The "Old School" will be featuring a pastel palette of curliques this week. (Open 10am to 3pm Easter Sunday) Sprinkles is featuring their HOP box, containing Sprinkles' Spring collection, including dark chocolate, brown sugar praline,......

Encountered this lineup for Vanilla Bake Shop in Santa Monica. The line was 20 stylish ladies deep with a sprinkling of guys. I asked one of the would-be cupcake customers who she was buying cupcakes for and she just said, "A friend." Another customer behind us wondered aloud why there were so many women and not really any guys. I guess women are more apt to buy cute cakes for each other and maybe......

Can't muster up the incentive to pay $3.25 for a cupcake? Then head on over to Sprinkles in Beverly Hills to get one for free! For today only, Sprinkles is teaming up with FOX's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles for a promotion. The first 1000 customers will get a free "red eye red velvet" cupcake and according to the store, cupcakes are still available and probably have a "couple hours left" until they hit......

The line. For cupcakes. Joy, my ass. I've never tried Sprinkles Cupcakes before, but I'd heard they were the cupcake shit, and I was hoping to send them to my mom for her birthday (happy birthday Mom!) as kind of a "love from LA" type of gift. So I get to the cupcake place, and lo and behold, there is a line. Out the door. 30 people deep. For CUPCAKES. I'm just saying--really--a line?!......

It was a sunny morning when I decided to stop by Jamaica Cakes on Pico. I’d heard good things, and I was ready for something sweet. They had some great looking chocolate espresso cupcakes, looking almost like muffins, with just a dollop of cream cheese frosting, and red velvet, but no others. Still, there was a pleasing assortment of cookies and a number of breakfast pastries. I wanted that chocolate espresso cupcake, but went against......

Assorted Cupcakes at Crumbs Bakeshop Crumbs Bakeshop, a New York haven of baked goodies, has staked claim to 9465 S. Santa Monica Boulevard. If that address sounds familiar, it is about two blocks east of LA cupcake mecca, Sprinkles. With flavors at Crumbs like Oreo, Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough, Reese's, Heath Bar, and M&M, the difference in style is clear. Crumbs has the warm feeling of an old-time candy store. Nostalgic childhood favorites Twinkie, Hostess......

Ever since we watched SNL's Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell mack on some cupcakes in Lazy Sunday, it seems that the whole country has gone cupcake crazy. The sugary fad has been going strong for a few years now. Here in LA, loads of cupcake establishments continue offering the happy little cakes. Many will debate whether Sprinkles, Toast, Joan's on Third, Dainties or Leda's have the best cupcakes. Lately it seems like everytime I......

Santa Monica seems to be the epicenter of cupcakes these days, now that there are not one just one (Yummy Cupcakes one block closer to the Promenade) but two cupcake places there -- four on the Westside, if you count Susie Cakes in Brentwood and Butter Cake Bakery on Pico. Vanilla Bake Shop is dessert caterers Amy and Jeremy Berman's first bakery, and it's very charming. A lot of people in this town are......

Last Sunday night, whilst many Angelenos were trying to make complete sentences out of what was left between all the bleeps heard during the MTV Movie Awards, I was down by the beach at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, checking out an event called "Dessert Decadence." Billed as a sunset poolside minglefest, the event featured neither a sunset (too overcast and ran from 5-8, just a bit too early) nor a poolside (we......

One of our favorite Food TV shows is Throwdown, which involves Celeb Chef Bobby Flay trying to master someone else's culinary specialty and springing a spontaneous cook-off challenge (hence, Throwdown) on them. (Our favorite part of the intro sequence is Flay saying: "I might win. I might even lose.") Every time we watch it, though, we wish that we could run out and taste the competition, like we did when we were craving fish......

Time and time again, the small little boutique bakery on Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks keeps on building its reputation. First, Leda's Bake Shop comes on to the scene with its whimsical cupcakes and baked goods, put together in their clean-cut 1960s open style kitchen. Then last fall, to appeal to soccer moms with lactose intolerant sweet teething children and vegans, they added vegan cupcakes. Then came vegan chocolate chip, oatmeal cherry and snickerdoodle......