Eating cupcakes for Charity

I didn't eat a single cupcake for a whole month! Yes that's right from the 25th of December till the 25th of Jan I was cupcake-free! So after some thought I decided to end my cupcake-fast at Lola's cafe in Selfridges (somewhere I've been meaning to visit for ages!) with a couple of their charity cupcakes.

I previously blogged about Lola's Kiss it Better cupcake, and Manny had expressed an interest in their Hazelnut Vanilla cupcake after I mentioned it on here. Since blogging about it, Lola's had announced that 100% of the retail price from their nutella cupcake was going to survivors of the Haiti earthquake - so we were not only stuffing ourselves but doing our bit for charity too.

The cafe is very small, with only enough seats for about a dozen or so people, and as its in Selfridges and looks rather inviting, its difficult to get a seat. This was my 3rd try at a sit down cupcake experience in Selfridges and we got lucky - grabbing a table being used by a member of staff, who kindly took her laptop elsewhere :)

We ordered our cupcakes and a cappuccino for me, mocha (with whipped cream) for tubby Manny. Firstly the coffee, provided by Vida e Caffe is amazing, some of the best I've tried - really flavoursome and well made, and they came with a little square of Lindt dark chocolate which made Manny even happier as he now had something to dunk in his whipped cream. I had seen him eyeing my flake and was guarding it from him.

So, the cupcakes. Last time I tried Lola's Christmas cupcakes I was a little over-whelmed by the amount of food colouring and a lacking of vanilla flavour, however there were no issues with these, they were wonderful. The base of mine was soft and flavoursome and the frosting was very tasty indeed. The smarties and flake worked really well - and I loved the fact that it was designed by a 4 year old - it looked and tasted like something a 4 year old would love! Having said that the 37 year old me loved it too, but then I'm a child at heart, especially when it comes to food! Manny's nutella frosting was fantastic (I took a little smidgen to try it). Oh and as well as the lovely cakes, you get proper mini-cutlery to eat your cupcake with, which is ideal as sometimes wooden forks impair the taste of your cupcake!

I'm not sure if you can still get these cupcakes in Lola's as tomorrow is February but I urge you to pop along and see - the money is going to good causes, and the cakes are definitely worth trying.

Love makes the world go round

How cute are all these Valentines cupcakes from The Gourmet Cupcake Company? I don't think anyone would be disappointed to receive a box of these on Valentines day! The lovely "will you marry me" ones in the top pic can be customised to say anything you require and the heart ones are available in your choice of flavour and colour, although I personally like the black hearts as they're rather anti-soppy while still being romantic!

As well as offering a rather fabulous array of valentines cupcakes, The Gourmet Cupcake Co offer a couple of gift ideas for all you cupcake lovers out there.

First up are their cupcake kits, which feature everything you need to get started on cupcake baking for yourself, and include 50 of their gorgeous cupcake cases- you can find out more about the kits, and order, here. They also offer cupcake decorating classes costing £75 for weekdays (£95 weekends) which includes all materials, lunch and a dozen cupcakes to take home - lasting approx 6 hours this is the best value cupcake class I've come across online. They are also due to start classes in level two cupcake decorating soon, where you learn advance icing and decorating skills, further info on both levels of classes available here.

Finally, back to the Valentines selection - for every box they sell during Valentines week (8-14 Feb) they will donate £3 to Bliss' Cake a Difference appeal.

Photographs used with thanks to Gourmet Cupcake Company.

Bea-utiful cupcakes for your Valentine

Bea's of Bloomsbury always produce some of the prettiest, and tastiest, cupcakes and fortunately their selection for Valentines doesn't disappoint! I love them all, and I'm sure anyone would be happy to receive them as a Valentines gift.

Available in boxes of 6 for £13 or 12 for £25 or as part of their fabulous sounding Love Box with lots of other goodies, including chocolate brownie hearts, further details of which can be found on their site. I know someone that will love a brownie heart so I'll have to pop in pre-valentines to grab a couple.

As much as I like the look of the Valentines selection, I am personally hoping someone will pop in and get me one of their Chinese New Year selection featuring my favourite animal of all time - the panda!!! I don't think I've seen a prettier cupcake ever! MUST get one.

Finally, Bea's are currently running a Cupcakes against Malaria campaign - if you buy 6 cupcakes they send a malaria net to the survivors of the Haiti earthquake. You can read about it on Bea's website and at Againstmalaria.com.

Thanks to Bea's for use of the photographs

Butch it up, Buttercup

This weeks Time Out New York has an article on where to buy 167 different flavours of cupcakes in the City, and highlights 3 cupcake bakers who offer out-there flavour choices for NYC's cupcake lovers, two of which I'd not heard of before; Butch Bakery and Robicellis.

I couldn't resist using the tagline from Butch Bakery's website as this post's title - it sums up their manifesto rather well I'd say:

Our objective is simple. We're men, men who like cupcakes. Not the frilly pink frosted sprinkles and unicorns kind of cupcakes. We make manly cupcakes. For manly men.

Their cupcakes come in 12 flavours, all of which are booze soaked in some way and you can chose which pattern you'd like on top, including the very manly camouflage. These are available via mail order in New York only at the moment - they'd make a perfect manly gift for the man in your life I'd say (although my man doesn't object to frilly pink frosted sprinkles cupcakes!)

Robicelli's seem to be a typical cupcake company when you look at their Facebook page (their website is currently being redesigned), with yummy looking tiramisu (bottom pic), chocolate peanut butter and dulce de leche, however you soon run into their Elvis cupcake - banana base, with peanut butter frosting topped with brown sugar glazed bacon. These are the cupcakes that were meant to be sold deep fried at the Park Slope Chip Shop, in Brooklyn, leading to blogger/online media frenzy labelled cupcakegate. They also do a Harry Potter inspired Butterbeer flavour with butterscotch and sprinkled with edible gold dust (hope Warner Bros have given their approval!) and a vanilla waffle cake topped with maple syrup dipped buttermilk fried chicken. A fried chicken cupcake - not sure about that but next time we go to New York I might have to pop in and sample one just to say I have!

You can access the map featuring all the places to buy different flavoured cupcakes in NY here, and the artist who created the gorgeous word cloud of cupcake flavours' site here. I want a print of this for my cupcake kitchen - it's gorgeous!

If you want to read about the cupcakes we tried while in New York last year you can type New York into the search function or check out posts from March 09 (and maybe a couple in April) as that's when we visited and ate quite a few cupcakes :)

Thanks to Kurt M Crobert (wordcloud), Time Out (map), Butch Bakery(3rd pic down) and Robicellis (bottom pic) for use of the photos.

Damn you Godiva

WHY can't I buy these yummy pink vanilla buttercream cupcakes in the UK? I have emailed them to demand they stop teasing their UK customers with gorgeous looking cupcakes that aren't available to us - it just is not fair! Well I actually asked if they had any plans to sell them here, but I feel I should demand they start selling them as they're just look so nice and sound scrumdiddlyumptious

These sublime little cakes conceal an irresistible surprise inside – a luscious center of Godiva chocolate ganache. Our rich, moist, chocolate cupcakes are offered by the half dozen, all iced in pink vanilla buttercream especially for Valentine’s Day, or three each in chocolate and vanilla buttercream for a romantic weekend’s worth of indulgent nibbling. Sure to delight youngsters while sending adults into a state of chocolate bliss. 6 pcs.

But alas like their double chocolate cupcakes I blogged about previously they are only available in the USA - which sucks!

Godiva chocolate is really nice, and I can imagine their cupcakes, filled with yummy ganache must rock!

Thanks to Godiva.com for use of the photos of their drool-worthy cupcakes

MyChelle's Baketique

It seems I've mentioned Cakespy lots recently but I can't help it - she just keeps tweeting fabulous news that I have to share.

Today I was sitting on the bus catching up on recent tweets when I spotted this:

in London, MyChelle's Baketique has a cupcake bar with frosting shots. Wonderful London!

Along with this message was a link to their website, so I just had to click and read more about it - alas the website is infact just a front page with some basic details about what they offer, all in all not very inspiring.

Then when I got to work I got my daily Daily Candy email and lo and behold it was about MyChelle's Baketique;

We’ve found a better way to rack up green credentials.

Energy-efficient MyChelle’s Baketique — the adorable cupcake shop inside new ecofriendly hotel...

uses farm-fresh ingredients and recyclable packaging. New Yorker Michelle Husserl bakes delicious cakes and cupcakes in gourmet flavours like margarita, lemon meringue, carrot, fig, and peanut butter and jelly with an oozing centre. A cupcake bar serves icing shots — perfect for a quick, intense sugar high.

Hmm sounds more and more interesting, so I checked out the Hotel Rafayel blog;

Founded by Michelle Husserl, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute, Mychelle’s Baketique offers a full range of pastries and sweets for any occasion. Located in the lobby of Hotel Rafayel, the Baketique will be an irresistible diversion for anyone who passes its appetising window display.

Imagine tables stacked high with beautifully designed cupcakes decorated in the brightest Bollywood colours. Then imagine a row of delicious ice cream cones....wait, that won’t work. They’d melt. But, no. These are no ordinary ice cream cones. These are Mychelle’s utterly divine ice cream cone cupcakes. They have to be seen (and tasted) to be believed

So - margarita cupcakes, ice cream cone cupcakes, frosting shots, cupcakes - I'm sold!! I must go there soon! I was thinking about dragging Manny there on Monday as we have the day off but it depends on how keen he is about going to Battersea - although there is a brewery there so he may be up for it! I also read in BMI Voyager magazine that the cupcake shots are only 90p! Bargain, for that price you can have a couple!

Thanks to Hotel Rafayel and MyChelle's Baketique for use of the pics.

Perfect additions to your cupcake kitchen

A couple of cute little bits from Debenhams for valentines day.

I have been meaning to get this cute little cupcake shaped sifter for a while now, but I've not been to Oxford Street since pre-Christmas and the thought of venturing up there again fills me with horror, but I know I must go get this as it matches my teapot and cookie jar!

I've already got the cupcake oven gloves, thanks to Manny, and I'm not saying oven gloves are the most romantic present but they've got cupcakes on so who can resist!

Valentines @Paperchase

Firstly, I really wish that Paperchase would sort out their website. It doesn't seem to catch up to what they have in store very quickly and the variety of their goods available to buy on-line, via Amazon, is shocking. They're one of my favourite shops, and I've found some great cupcake goodies there but they need to sort out their on-line presence imo.

They have a few gifts instore for cupcake lovers this Valentines day, including this rather nice notebook which I very nearly bought but I have about 10 cupcake notebooks lying empty and I just cannot justify buying anymore! They also have this cute birthday and anniversary book - which is a bit too organised for me, and hardly anyone I know gets married so the anniversary part would be a waste, but I'm sure some people would find it immensely useful.

Finally, they also have a choice of cupcake valentines cards - my favourite one says "you're my cupcake" (available in the Covent Garden store if anyone is interested..ahem!) but that one isn't available online but this "I think you're yummy" one is rather cute too. Oh and its not cupcake related but for all you Twitter fans out there this "You're so tweet" card is just perfect!

My advice with Paperchase, if you're near one go instore for a much better selection of cupcake and Valentine goodies. They have the red heart shaped kitchenware again, including bowls, measuring spoons and egg cups - I love the giant bowl I got last year!

Crumbs and Doilies Valentine Cupcakes

Ok I'm running out of love cliches as titles for these posts so I'm sticking to informative and simple, which is probably best.

Crumbs and Doilies valentines selection is available online now, for delivery or collection:

A box of Crumbs and Doilies Valentine’s Cupcakes is the perfect gift for that special someone. Each of our Valentine's boxes contains a mixture of vanilla, chocolate and vanilla rose cupcakes, all freshly baked using the highest quality ingredients and all decorated with our usual obsessive attention to detail. Presented in a beautiful ribbon-tied box along with a card bearing your message of love or mystery, nothing says ‘I Love You, please save me a cake’ like a box of C&D Valentine’s Cupcakes.

Our special Valentine’s boxes are available to order in two sizes (15 or 24 minis) for delivery or collection across the Valentine’s weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

Further details can be found on their website.

I'm hoping Vanilla Rose is February's flavour of the month again as I missed it last year and really want to taste it!

Thanks to C&D for use of their pics of their yummy cupcakes.

Love is in the air

Aren't these love heart themed cupcake toppers really cute - or am I just getting overly-romantic while searching for romantic cupcake ideas online?

Also available, a cupcake shaped trivet for your kitchen, and these lovely heart shaped measuring cups, perfect for measuring out cupcake recipes from America, or for porridge, which is what I mainly use mine for! And finally, something I'm hoping for for valentines, a pink mixing bowl...yes I know, a mixing bowl is an odd gift but I love these bowls, in fact I heart them (sorry couldn't resist!)

All available from the Cooks Kitchen, who also have some valentine cupcake cases.

All photos copyright Cooks Kitchen, and used with thanks.

[edit: PLEASE see comments below re Cooks Kitchen's service before deciding to place an order. I have never bought anything from them so cannot comment from personal experience, but if you do decide to order from them please consider yourself fore-warned. I don't accept responsibility for any purchase you make after seeing them in this blog - I just find cupcake themed stuff and post it on here. If you want to recommend (or warn readers) about a company I feature on here please do - I'm all for good customer service and don't like to use companies that offer poor service! Thanks to Samantha for the warning]

Say"I love you" with cupcakes

I plan to round up all the valentines cupcakes available online and in stores in the coming weeks, with a few non-food cupcake present ideas thrown in. If you see something that you fancy you can send a link from here to your other half as a bit of a hint!

First up is Cirencester Cupcakes. Their gorgeous cakes are available in regular and bite sized versions, and in chocolate and vanilla flavour - and they are so pretty any woman, or man, would be happy to receive a box. Ordering details can be found here.

Don't say it with words... say it with cupcakes!

Our beautiful and tasty pieces of love are the perfect way to let that special person know you love them. For that lovely lady in your life, girls and cupcakes are a match made in heaven! A single or a dozen red cupcakes.

all pics are used with thanks to Cirencester Cupcakes.

And while you're indulging

If you pop down to show your support and buy the Kiss it Better cupcake, you might as well have one of January's flavour of the month, a hazelnut nutella cupcake, with a vanilla pod buttercream;

It's a decadent vanilla sponge filled with swirls of hazelnut nutella topped with a fresh and delicious vanilla pod buttercream icing. The topping is finished off with a pirouette wafer filled with belgium dark chocolate.

We use the yummiest ingredients in each cupcake creating an unrivalled combination of flavours and textures.

I really like the sound of the buttercream so I think I may break my cupcake fast with a couple of cupcakes from Lola's - wonder if I can persuade Manny to go on a mini-date to Lola's cafe next week?

Kiss it better

January is a month when people usually start cutting back on sweet treats due to the excesses of the festive season, however if you fancy a cupcake and are looking for an excuse to indulge, here you go;

LOLA’s has teamed up with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity to develop an exclusive cupcake for the charity’s Kiss it Better appeal.

The delicious LOLA’s Kitchen Kiss It Better cupcake was hand-crafted in LOLA’s bakery by former patient, four year old Jessica.

Jessica’s scrummy cupcake creation has a light and fluffy vanilla sponge made using the finest Madagascan vanilla pods, which is bursting with chunky chocolate chips. This latest LOLA’s flavour is finished with a heavenly butter cream icing, cheekily sprinkled with bright miniature Smarties™ and topped with a Cadbury’s chocolate Flake™.

Priced at £2.50 each, 30% of the retail price from the charity cupcake will go straight to support the Kiss It Better appeal - a national campaign to raise money to fund research into the causes and treatment of childhood cancer, one of the biggest diseases affecting children today.

A really pretty cupcake for a really great cause! You can order them online, or buy them in store at Selfridges and Harrods. I shall be popping along to one of the stores to buy a couple next week, diet be damned!

Unicorns pooping cupcakes

So I checked my google analytics the other day and discovered that the 3rd most searched term to get to my blog is "unicorns pooping cupcakes". This amused me as I just can't imagine anyone typing that into google! If you do however type it in I am the first result so hurrah!

Then today, while looking for a gift for my chum Renee, I noticed that the t-shirt which inspired the original post is now on sale, nearly half prize, in selected sizes only so if you want one be quick.

Finally, can I just say thank you to those of you who continue to visit my blog - I'm astounded by the amount of visitors I get and I'm touched that people pop on here to read my ramblings about my cupcake obsession- Thank you :)

Cupcakes for breakfast?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that even with a half spoon of vanilla sugar on it my Rude Health Top Banana porridge is way better nutritionally for me than new Cupcake Pebbles cereal from Post.

I was first alerted to the existence of cupcake cereal this morning while checking my Twitter in tweet from Cakespy. Of course I had to find out more and began Googling away. This is my favourite description from Popdose:

but oh my God, you guys, I wish the Web was scratch ‘n’ sniff, because words can’t describe the overpowering blast of cupcakeness that uncoils itself, panther-like, and lodges in your nostrils when you open a box of Cupcake Pebbles. It almost literally punches you in the face. If Betty Crocker and Mike Tyson decided to open a bakery together, I think they would aspire to the visceral scent-clubbing this cereal delivers — it’s so thick, by the time you tear open the bag, you feel like you’ve already eaten several bowls.

But don’t let that stop you from chowing down, because I’m here to tell you that if you’ve ever wished you could eat hundreds of tiny cupcakes in a bowl of cold milk, shoveling them madly into your mouth during the 35 seconds before they get soggy — and who hasn’t? — then Cupcake Pebbles is a dream come true.

Even though I love all things cupcake, I can't say I'm that convinced this cereal will taste good but I may have to ask Ann Arbor Dennis to pick me up a box when he's next grocery shopping just so I can be sure - and the front of the box will look cool in a frame in my kitchen! There is even a recipe on the box to bake your own giant Pebbles cupcake using the cereal, and it being America, a box of cake mix!

Thanks to Popdose for use of the photos and Cakespy (again) for the heads up!

If cupcakes were Scottish

They would most definitely be deep fried. These adorable deep fried bites of cupcake goodness were made by Jessie Oleson (Cakespy) and you can read how to make your own here and here.

Thanks to Jessie Oleson for use of her photographs and original art. Please check out Cakespy - its one of my favourite sites!

More Christmas gifts :)

I met up with my friends Dennis and Helen earlier in the week to finally exchange Christmas gifts - and aren't they fab! As well as an array of lovely Hello Kitty stuff, I got the GIANT Big Top silicone cupcake mould from Dennis, and the cupcake a day calender :) He also got me a bag from Original Cupcakes in Vancouver, which he'd visited since I last saw him in October - check out their website here.

The gorgeous door-mat is from Helen - as you can see I'm not the only one that fell in love with it - Demon rushed from sleeping the sofa as soon as I put it on the kitchen floor. You can see more pics of Demon here, if you so wish.

Finally, my lovely friend from Chicago, Renee, sent me a package filled with awesome stuff, including Hellbent for Cooking and more Hello Kitty stuff, and she also made me some super-cute little Christmas decorations, one of which you can see in the picture of the cupcake calendar. If you look closely you'll see the cork is from a bottle of wine from Cupcake Vineyards! I've wanted to try the wine for some time,but can never find it here. I've emailed Renee for some feedback on it!

I am lucky to have such awesome friends :)