I Heart Cupcakes

Bananas about butterscotch

2012-01-29T19:04:00.000Z

Manny has occasionally accused me of buying too many bananas just so we have some left for baking banana bread. If I was American I'd say here that 'I plead the fifth', but I'm not so I won't.

Due to my occasional over buying of bananas I have baked a lot of banana bread - one of my favourites being to bake the bananas in the oven with some rum and sugar first before adding to the bread batter, however we may have found a new favourite. Even better than rum baked bananas?

I give you my new favourite baking ingredient - butterscotch morsels. I was given two packets a while back by an American friend and oh my they add a touch of deliciousness to everything. And are quite tasty straight from the packet too.

Banana bread isn't the prettiest is it? Butterscotch morsels make it taste great but don't do much for the look of it. It didn't help that my house has been completely dark for the last week due to massive mounds of earth outside due to Overground engineering works - so sorry for the incredibly dark pics.

The recipe I tarted up is from How to be a Domestic Goddess and is bake for this months Forever Nigella hosted by Maison Cupcake.

The recipe can be found here and to make my version all you do is take out the sultanas and replace with butterscotch chips. Butterscotch beats sultanas every time surely?

Oh and I may have overdone the walnuts a little - I like a lot of them in my banana bread - as you can probably see. Just follow the recipe if you don't like quite so many. I promise it makes a lovely banana bread - delicious with a cup of tea.

Btw does Nestle Tollhouse remind anyone else of the Friends episode with Nezle Tulhouze?

Poofy Woolly Biscuits

2012-01-26T20:36:00.000Z

This morning I woke up to a spate of references to Lamington's on my Twitter and Facebook feed, as incase you didn't know, today is Australia Day. I don't really know what Australia Day involves but it seems to involve the eating of Lamington's and Anzacs. Or maybe that's just people I know who celebrate.

When I worked in an Aussie run cafe over the summer baking all their lovely cakes and biscuits I became sick to the back teeth of Anzacs - rolling 100's of syrup'y balls at 6am will do that to you, so I decided to make some Lamingtons to celebrate. Any excuse for cake. And I had been meaning to make them for ages - I badgered the owners of the cafe to let me make them but they said they were 'boring'. I notice now they have an Aussie baking person they're making them..tsk.

There are several accounts of where the name Lamington comes from but most agree it was named after Lord Lamington, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. Ironically he is said to have hated the cake named in his honour and called them 'poofy woolly biscuits'. See I wasn't just being offensive with the title.

These are pretty simple to make. Bake a quite basic vanilla sponge. I used Dan Lepard's recipe, adding more vanilla, from his wonderful book Short & Sweet, which was turned out ok, except the cooking time was about 5 minutes less than stated. Then you section the cake, split each section in half and slather on some jam. Then it gets messy - the cakes are dunked into a chocolate/cocoa coating, then covered in coconut. I suggest being near a sink when doing this - I made a proper mess.

They're not really much to look at but they do taste good. Next time I may use a coconut sponge instead to give it a bit more ooomph.

Happy Australia Day everyone - I'm off to have a Lamington and a cup of tea.

Kicking off 2012 with a healthy(ish) cupcake..and some not so healthy

2012-01-21T19:08:00.000Z

When I first saw that Lola's were introducing four healthier cupcakes this month made with all natural fruit I was slightly dubious as we've not done well with previous healthier cupcakes. Yes Petit Pois I'm looking at you and your crapcakes from hell.

However I found myself in Selfridges last week and thought I'd give them a try. And I'm glad I did. I opted for the passion fruit and it was incredibly nice. Really soft sponge with a passion fruit custard and topped with really tasty frosting.

As well as passion fruit they have raspberry, blueberry and banana. I think they're only available till the end of January so be quick if you want to try them!

Also scoffed recently was this lovely cupcake from Lily Vanilli's new(ish) cafe just off Columbia Road. We visited on a Wednesday night before Christmas, but usually the cafe is only open on Sundays -it's worth travelling for.

My gingerbread cupcake was fabulous - with a brandy buttercream frosting. I had a LV cupcake from Harrod's over a year ago and was not impressed, really dry and flavourless but this was totally removed from that - very fresh and bursting with flavour. In the background you can see perhaps the best sausage roll I've ever eaten - well I can't really say eaten - the tubby one whose sausage roll it was didn't share - I had a bite, but it was a good bite. Then again, can anything that comes surrounded in a duvet of lardon filled puff pastry be bad? I think not.

As well as a sausage roll, Manny managed to scoff a brownie - and it was a slab of a brownie. Again I got a bite - melt in the mouth delicious. I would definitely go back just for the brownie. And maybe a sausage roll. And a cupcake. This is why I'm fat.

The cafe looks pretty cool too - covered in a zombie style mural at the back to go with the theme of Lily's book.

Also eaten recently, although not a cupcake I HAD to include this amazing Guinness cake I had from Bea's of Bloomsbury's Kings Road branch last week. I had popped to Jane Asher to stock up on edible glitter amid rumours that it's due to be taken from our shelves soon due to stupid people not understanding that you need to use EDIBLE glitter on cakes not just any random glitter (I call that Darwin's law - weeding out the stupid people) and needed coffee and a sit down and Bea's isn't too far away.

The Guinness cake was very moist and the frosting was divine. Just sitting in the cafe was enough to tempt you to buy lots of cake - there was so much on offer, including cupcakes.

I enjoyed it so much I actually made this very cake from Bea's book last Saturday as a welcome home for Manny after he'd been to Germany to play a gig. The cake itself came out really well, but I followed the recipe for the frosting and it was a gloopy mess - it didn't seem to have enough icing sugar listed in the recipe. Luckily, I managed to save it and really liked the inclusion of golden syrup in the frosting although it meant it was very sweet. And I must learn, stop licking the syrup spoon, I was on a sugar high for hours.

Sorry the pictures crap - it was about midnight when I finished making it - I find it hard to sleep when Manny's away.

Finally, my final cupcake ever from Love Bakery. Just before Christmas I received a DM on Twitter from the lovely Rebecca to ask me had I heard that Love Bakery was closing down - I hadn't heard but checked out Sam's blog and discovered they were closing the very next day, 23rd December. Obviously I had to go one last time.

Sorry about the festiveness of the pics, I was meant to blog this ages ago. I've been a bit lax at blogging lately due to some issues with photo theft etc but aim to blog more in 2012.

Anyways, the cakes were really good, especially my rhubarb cheesecake one, and Love Bakery will definitely be missed from the London cupcake scene.

So there you go - I've eaten a few cupcakes lately and not a crap cake amongst them - a good end to 2011/beginning to 2012!

I raise a Baileys cupcake to you all

2011-12-30T15:57:00.004Z

2011 has been quite the year for me.

In February I got a Kitchenaid, and love it as much today as I did the day I brought it home squealing all the way from Chiswick to New Cross. I still often stand in the Kitchen stroking it in a way that isn't particularly normal for a girl and a stand mixer.

In March left a job that I for some time despised with a rousing chorus of so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu, adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu. And yes I did sing it LOUDLY as I was leaving. Lots of Jägermeister may have been involved.

Then in April I buggered off to Madrid on a whim to see Manowar, visit twin baby pandas and eat cupcakes.

Then I started working in baking - first in a cafe in Brixton where I covered the bakery for two days a week while the other girl had time off. It was great while it lasted but alas I couldn't survive on just 5 or so hours of work a week and thankfully one of my favourite bakers in London was hiring and I was lucky enough to get the job. This led to months of baking, and learning, with someone I really admired. It also led to me getting more work with another fab baker. I can honestly say the time with these two has been the best time I've had at work in many years. I've learned lots - including NOT to turn a Kenwood to pulse just after adding the red colouring to red velvet batter or to turn it to pulse while only cream cheese is in the bowl. You will not look pretty afterwards. Mainly, don't pulse anything ever. And check the baking powder, bicarb each and every time - then recheck. Oh and don't pick up cake tins straight out of the oven with bare hands. This hurts. Lots.

I'm hoping 2012 leads to lots more baking and lots more good cake! Oh and can we hope that it's the year when some crapcake purveyors stop peddling their old tasteless poor excuses for cake please?

That shall be I Heart Cupcakes call for 2012:

What do we want?

Fresh n tasty cake!

When do we want it?

NOW! please *

Happy New Year everyone - may all your cupcake wishes for 2012 come true.

Cheers, and thanks to everyone who continues to visit my blog!

* remember manners cost nothing

Christmas Presence - Nutella for everyone

2011-12-30T14:53:00.001Z

Sarah aka Maison Cupcake has announced that Christmas Presence will be the last Forever Nigella in its current format so I had to post an entry. Luckily I'd already made something suitable as a Christmas gift for my lovely friend Kirsty.

The Nutella Cheesecake recipe comes from Stylist magazine which Nigella recently guest edited. The cover was the talk of the town and the magazine featured other exclusive recipes including bacon brownies which I also made - I didn't eat any but Manny said they were tasty. I just can't get my head around bacon and chocolate.

As well as the giant cheesecake the recipe was big enough to make a couple of mini ones for myself and Manny (I knew all those Gu glass pots I insist on keeping would come in handy) so we could taste test it just incase. I can report that it was delicious, so much so that I had to stop Manny from sneaking Nigella style into the fridge late at night in his silk* robe to steal a huge slice!

This was so good I'm hoping to make another for our New Years eve dinner- complete with edible glitter of course!

Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for reading!

*Manny doesn't really own a silk robe although he wants a red one with dragons on after watching too many bad Kung Fu movies -I've threatened divorce should he ever buy one

Penguin Snowball cupcakes

2011-12-06T15:49:00.001Z

These cupcakes are perfect for the positively Arctic temperatures out there. Ok, not quite Arctic but blooming freezing nonetheless.

I was sent some lovely chilli penguins from Hotel Chocolat, part of their Christmas gift selection, and decided to use them as cupcake toppers.

I opted for a coconut cupcake topped with a coconut covered snowball of coconut frosting - what can I say I love coconut and thought it would go well with the slightly spicy chocolate.

The chocolate penguins went really well with the cakes, and would make a lovely stocking filler for a fan of chocolate with a little chilli kick. If they're not a fan of chilli chocolate the penguins also come in caramel! Yum

Finally, don't you just love my little penguin guarding the cupcake?

Making Marshmallow Hi Hats with Lola

2011-11-09T19:24:00.001Z

I buy a LOT of cupcake books, but my favourite recent purchase is Making Cupcakes with Lola by the girls behind Lola's Cupcakes.

I got the book about two weeks ago and baked these the next day - I HAD to bake something from it as it all looked so good.

The book itself is really pretty, with a photo for each cupcake - something not all books have. The recipes are all pretty easy to follow and don't require lots of unusual ingredients - they include lots of Lola's favourites that you may have had from their stores including some boozy cocktail inspired cupcakes.

I couldn't resist the Hi Hat Marshmallow, co-incidentally Lola's flavour of the month in store now. Last months apple pie cupcake was one of the nicest cupcakes I've had recently - the candied pecan on top was delicious.

For those of you who don't know a Hi Hat is basically a cupcake with some kind of topping which is then dipped into chocolate (or butterscotch or a similar topping). The Lola's recipe is a chocolate cake topped with Marshmallow then dipped into chocolate.

The cake itself was a doddle to make and resulted in a nice moist, very chocolaty base.

The marshmallow was a bit of a faff to make but really rather easy. I think there should've perhaps been a bit more though as we had to be a little mean when piping the marshmallow out, or maybe I just like a LOT of topping? Also it is very sticky - I was covered in the stuff.

I waited for Manny to come home from work so we could have a go at dipping them together. It was a lot of fun and the only disaster was some where I had dyed the marshmallow blue as a pre-Halloween experiment - they just kept falling off so we drizzled some chocolate on top and they looked kinda gruesome, especially in my Martha Poison cupcake wrappers.

The 'normal' Hi Hats were a success - I'm not particularly fond of chocolate cake but this one was really good, and I loved the chocolate covered marshmallow.

The book is full of stuff I want to bake, and shall be doing so in the next few weeks. They are having a launch tomorrow at Selfridges with free cakes, champagne and book signings - further details can be found on their Facebook page. I'm sure any fan of cupcakes would love to find a copy in their Christmas Stocking.

Raining Blood cupcakes

2011-10-30T20:36:00.000Z

I thought long and hard about what would be my special ingredient for my Halloween cupcakes this year. About a month ago I decided and tried to source my chosen ingredient from various places including local shops and even resorted to asking a chosen few people on Twitter (thanks for your help if it was you!!). I then found out a special license was required to handle my chosen ingredient and I didn't fancy getting into trouble just for baking a cake so I kinda gave up for a few minutes. Who'd have thought pigs blood was so difficult to obtain? That's right - pigs blood. Ever since I'd read about Bocca Di Lupo's Sanguinaccio desert, a sweet pate of pig's blood and chocolate I've wanted to try it and thought Halloween would be the perfect time to try my own cupcake version.

Thankfully Bocca Di Lupo's gelato shop, Gelupo, came to my rescue with their Sanguinaccio gelato - a gelato with chocolate, Marsala and PIG'S BLOOD. Perfect.

I pootled on down to their Soho store and got a few scoops of their Sanguinaccio and rushed it home on the bus to New Cross. The girl in the store was lovely and put it in a special take away container thing for me and it was still frozen when I got home.

I weighed out what I'd need and put the rest in the freezer. I'd tried some in the shop and was pleasantly surprised - a friend had bet me it would taste "like black pudding", (gag) but thankfully it didn't. It was very chocolaty, with a hint of cinnamon and an iron background from the blood. Quite tasty actually.

So I took a photo of the ice cream. It looks kinda like poo...

I did warn you.

Anyways, moving on from the poo image. I used one of my own recipes for boozy cupcakes and replaced all of the milk in the recipe with slightly melted gelato, and also replaced some of the booze with it. I added some Marsala to complement the gelato, and a wee tipple of Cointreau for good measure. I'm not going to type out the recipe as I'm not sure many people want to make pigs blood ice cream cupcakes. If you do, mail me and the recipe is yours.

I covered them in some creamy marscapone frosting - mainly because I wasn't sure what went with blood (does anyone?) and wanted something a bit lighter to balance out the quite brownie like cakes. I resisted covering them in glitter to signify my favourite vampire in the world as Manny would have ridiculed me with his 'ooooh sparkles' routine and I tire of it and instead splattered them with some coulis.

So how did they taste? Rather good actually - they were like a brownie but a bit lighter -quite squidgy and moist with a boozy kick and just a hint of iron'y goodness. While eating them though I couldn't quite get it out of mind that I was eating blood which is odd as I eat meat but in a desert it just seemed different and a little silly really.

Incase you are wondering where the blog title comes from check out my inspiration - the fabulous Slayer covered in blood playing Raining Blood live.

Happy Halloween everyone and remember everyone's entitled to one good scare!

Halloween goes Poop

2011-10-27T23:04:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week I attended a Halloween cake pop course with the British Queen of the cake pops, Molly Bakes.

We learned step by step how to make the perfect pops. From rolling and shaping to insider tips about how experts coat their pops and ensure their balls don't roll down the sticks we learned it all. I was chuffed that none of my balls ended up at the bottom of the candy melt pool as has happened to me at home.

We also got tips about making decorations for the pops - this part was very hands on for me as I was crap at making the teeny tiny bits like devil horns. Molly was great at showing me one on one how to do the sugarpaste bits and I now know when it comes to sugarpaste cornflour is my friend. My witches hat still turned out a bit wonky but I think she looks suitably menacing even with a bit of a larger than necessary hat.

Next up we piped candy onto the pops that required it, for example the zombies which required extra blood and the mummies who needed mummifying.

Then came the bit I feared the most - painting directly onto the pops. With a brush and paints. Christ on a bike. I am crap at any kind of painting unless its my nails but I think I did okay(ish). The fact that they're Halloween so things can look a bit special helped I think.

We did eyeballs....

I have a phobia about eyeballs and even painting this made me a little queasy.

Then we did pumpkins - mine kinda looks like it was carved by someone with a bit of a blunt knife.

Next up was a spooky black cat - which I think looks quite cute...you can't see her pink nose in the pic but it was there!

One of my favourite things was learning how to make the ghost shaped pops - I loved the way we learned to shape them and shall be making more ghosts in the future as they were relatively simple to do and one of the easier pops to paint.

My devil isn't that scary - he reminds of the Devil from the Satan is Real album cover.

One of my favourite things to make was Molly's infamous 'shits on a stick', or poop pops if you're a little more ladylike. They were the ones Manny went for straight away and he loved them. Perfect for a Halloween party.

I'm quite proud of what I made as my previous attempts at cake pops were rather lame. And now I know some insider tricks I shall definitely be attempting some of the ideas from Molly's book, Cake Pops. I got it months ago and have had several ideas bookmarked but not gotten round to them. I shall be popping lots more now.

You can view Molly's class schedule here and you can visit Molly's stall at Netil Market on Saturdays to buy her cakes, or her cake pops from Selfridges. The class was lots of fun and I came home with a huge box of cake pops and lots of great hints and tips.

As is tradition I'm including links to some suitably gory Halloween vids/songs with my Halloween posts - today it's Holland's finest Rompeprop with their classic We Want Gore (possibly not safe for work!). Enjoy \m/

F*%k You Monday cake

2011-10-17T22:24:00.000+01:00

Ever have one of those days where everything is going wrong? That happened to me last Monday so I decided to bake a 'f*%k you Monday' cake.

I had a lot of Pink Lady apples in the house so decided to make my f*%k you Monday cake my entry into the October challenge from The Pink Whisk where the theme was apples.

I based the cake on one of my favourites from the new Cake Days book from the hummingbird bakery - the apple streusel cake. I have made this twice before - once with apples and once with lemon and blueberries (this was amazing!). The cake is easily adaptable, which is the reason I love it so.

For this one I added one of my favourite ingredients to the apples - Speculoos spread. The recipe below is my adapted recipe - for the original please see Cake Days.

Streusel Topping:
1 tsp cinnamon
40g cold unsalted butter, diced
70g soft light brown sugar
70g plain flour

Sponge:
60g unsalted butter at room temp
100g caster sugar
140g plan flour
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
80ml milk
3 pink lady apples
Speculoos spread (optional)

Preheat oven to 170 . Grease 8 inch tin (I line with parchment circles from Lakeland and brush with cake release).

First make the streusel. Put flour and cinnamon into a bowl. Add the butter and rub until they resemble breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar and set aside.

Now the cake - cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix again, scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure everything is thoroughly mixed.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and add half to the creamed sugar and butter, followed by half the milk. Mix well on medium, scraping down the sides frequently. Repeat with the rest of the dry and wet ingredients.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.

Peel, core and slice the apples into thin(ish) slices. Arrange on top of the cake batter, and if using dollop spoonfuls of Speculoos on top of the apples, before sprinkling with the streusel topping to form an even layer.

Bake in over for about 35 - 45 mins - until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave to cool in tin, the scoff with a cup of tea, and some cream/ice cream if you choose and your Monday blues will disappear.

Sorry about the photos - it was a dark and dank day in my New Cross kitchen (f'ing Monday) and our light was all being blocked by scaffolding outside!

Only 87 days till Christmas

2011-09-28T22:53:00.000+01:00

I've been feeling very festive recently and now that Next have launched their Cupcake Christmas guide I'm ready to put up the tree and turn the fairy lights on!

Every year they seem to bring out new things I want - this year the ceramic rolling pin is on my must have list.

Last year lots of you missed out on the ceramic measuring cups and I still receive emails asking me to find them, or sell mine to people, so if you want them this year you'd best be quick. I also love the heart measuring spoons. I can never have too many measuring spoons.

I spotted the cupcake stand mixer some time ago, and had hoped to give one away on the blog but alas it wasn't to happen. It's cute though and good for young bakers I'd say. There is also a cute cupcake kit for beginners.

Also perfect for the cold weather ahead - the cupcake draught excluder. I have to get one to keep out the winter chills!

I also like how Next have incorporated the cupcake phenomenon in with crafting - the little sewing kit is very cute.

If you want any of the cupcake items I say buy them asap as they really do sell out quickly - last year we had to schlep to Bromley to get some of it!

Thanks to TCake for alerting me to the new guide being online.

Introducing the Lemmy

2011-09-13T19:32:00.001+01:00

This is a cupcake for beer drinkers and hellraisers, for fans of rock and roll, and more importantly, Lemmy and Jack Daniels.

I once presented Lemmy with a Jack Daniels cake and a giant bottle of JD on his birthday following another legendary gig at Hammersmith Odeon so it seemed fitting that I name a cupcake featuring his favourite tipple in his honour.

I have made some JD and coke cupcakes before following a recipe in a book where lounging on a set looking like Little Red Riding Hood appears to have been more important than recipes that resulted in flavoursome cupcakes so this time I went with a coca cola cake from Nigella, tweaked slightly and a chocolate and Jack Daniels frosting using my favourite chocolate frosting recipe. The Lemmy - aka the Jack Daniels and coke cupcake was born.

Then came a little twist.

I've been thinking of ways to ensure alcoholic cupcakes retain that boozy element. All too often they are disappointing. If you bake it into the cake it bakes away. Make a sugar syrup with alcohol and it burns off, too much in the frosting can react badly with the sugar. My plan was instead to inject it into the sponge, but instead of injecting it in pre-frosting which can result in a soggy bottom, I decided instead to use a pipette featuring a shot of JD which you can inject into the base when you're about to eat it - giving the cupcake a good boozy kick and ensuring no soggy bottoms!

While the cake tasted fab with the JD shot in it I wasn't impressed with the coke cake by itself - it was rather bland, so next time I shall use my own recipe. Then again it wouldn't be a Lemmy cupcake without the Jack Daniels now would it?
Turn the stereo to 11, put on the Ace of Spades and enjoy \m/

Lemmy photographed at the Sheraton Park Tower,London, November 2010 Photograph: Levon Biss

Turn the stereo up to 11, bung on the Ace of Spades and enjoy \m/

Molly Bakes Cupcakes

2011-08-21T19:38:00.000+01:00

I'm sure most readers of my blog have heard of Molly Bakes and her amazing cake pops so I won't go on, but if you don't know her work check out her website.

Until recently there were only a few places to buy Molly Bakes cake pops and cakes, but now you can visit her weekly stall at Netil Market on Saturdays.

I popped by last Saturday before work to check out her cute stall and pick up a cake. There was quite a choice.

Everything looked so good but I opted for a non cupcake - gasp. I know. Since I work a lot with cake I find myself not really craving it like I used to, so instead I had a bakewell tart.

Look how pretty it is - who could resist?

I'd not had a good bakewell tart in years and this one was lovely - nice homemade pastry that melted in my mouth.

Next time I pop by I'll pick up a cupcake as well - I promise.

I also still have to bake from Molly's beautiful Cake Pops book, which I received some time ago. It's full of lovely ideas for cake pops.

Finally, if you're in the area for cake two other nearby great places - Lucky Chip for the best burgers in town, I think perhaps surpassing the Meatwagon, and Yum Bun for Momofuku style pork buns.

The Lucky Chip Sheen Burger

Yum Buns Pork Belly Bun

I know they're not cupcakes but they ARE delicious! And no, I didn't eat them all in one go - I work nearby so often pop to different places.

Chopping with cupcakes

2011-08-11T12:27:00.002+01:00

Help wanted: Has anyone spotted these knifes instore? They are by Kuhn Rikon and you can't buy them via their site. I checked John Lewis yesterday and will probably pop to Lakeland next week - if anyone has spotted them please let me know.

Update: I have found them online but if you know of a store, preferably in London, where I can buy the cupcakes ones that would be fab. I already have some plain ones I got in John Lewis and Lakeland some time ago -they're pink to go with my kitchen! Ta

Do you Speculoos?

2011-07-25T22:54:00.000+01:00

Why is it when you go abroad all the food just looks so much more interesting? Speculoos pasta is one of my favourite 'foreign' supermarket finds - it is a Dutch spread based on the lovely Lotus biscuits you can buy in UK supermarkets. I know it sounds weird but it is ADDICTIVE. I hearby start the campaign to get it sold here. You can email them via their, rather boring, UK site.

Just before I left my old crappy office job in March a colleague mentioned he was going to Amsterdam for a day and he kindly brought me back a jar of paste and two packets of Speculoos sprinkles aka Hagel. Yesterday I finally got round to using them and damn, why did I wait so long?

I made two kinds of cupcakes - one stuffed with Speculoos and one with it baked in.

I used my basic vanilla cupcake recipe (except I used slightly less vanilla than usual), and scooped some into the cases with my trusty ice cream scoop, then mixed two dollops (approx 2 tablespoons - give or take some spoon licking) into the leftover mixture for the baked Speculoos cupcakes.

For the plain cupcakes - once cooled I scooped the middle out of them and added a heaped teaspoon into the centre of the cakes. Again spoon licking may have been involved.

The frosting is trusty vanilla frosting base (125g unsalted butter, 250g icing sugar - milk if necessary), without vanilla, with about 2 -3 tablespoons of Speculoos mixed in to taste. And boy did it taste pipe straight into your mouth good.

The plain ones got topped with a swirl of frosting and a good sprinkle of Speculoos Hagel - little sprinkles of biscuit. The baked Speculoos ones I did a circle of frosting and filled the middle with spread before topping with sprinkles. This was my favourite one I think, but it was difficult to choose - they were both delicious.

As I was baking these I realised the mixes go out of date next month so I am giving away an unopened box of Speculoos Hagel Mix, the biscuit sprinkles mixed with chocolate. The Dutch put these on buttered toast, but they are great cupcakes toppers, could be mixed into cake or just eaten from the box.

To win, just leave a comment below stating what item you have found on holiday that you wish you could buy in the UK.

You can get an additional chance to win by following @annecupcake on Twitter and tweet the following message: I've just entered to win #speculoossprinkles from @annecupcake and you can too. Enter here: http://i-heart-cupcakes.blogspot.com

Open to Mainland UK residents only. Contest closes at midnight Friday 29th July. PLEASE ensure you leave an email address or @twitter name so I can contact you - if you do not I will award it to someone else as I work all weekend and can't chase people up! Winner will receive the prize early August and the use by date is August 18th so only enter if you are going to use it please!

Finally you can buy Speculoos paste in the UK online but compare the prices to Hollands - 1 Euro - I must get to Holland soon. They also have crunchy spread. The lucky sods.

It's the final crapcake(s)

2011-07-19T20:36:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed that posts on this blog have slowed down a little. This is mainly due to me working odd hours at the bakery (4am starts!!!), but also because I really am TIRED of eating crap cupcakes. They are expensive and they sadden me - my heart breaks a little more each time I spend £2 on a cake that if you threw it as someone could lead to an attempted murder charge. Also, I'm tired of the hate mail I receive from bakers when they read my reviews, accusing me of trying to hate on them or lying etc - rather than question why their cakes are, quite frankly, so f**king awful.

Anyhow I have made the decision to only eat cakes I bake myself or from bakeries I know and trust for the time being. Don't worry I'll still review places when I travel but I am just tired of some of the awful cupcakes in London at the moment and shall be giving them a miss for a while.

However I couldn't leave without mentioning two truly awful recent(ish) cupcake exploits.

First up we travel to Birmingham and back in time to March. I know - it's taken me a while to get round to writing this up, for that I apologise.

As soon as I'm travelling anywhere I check out what cupcakes there are on offer - Birmingham seemed to be quite a cupcake-free zone so I was happy when I chanced upon the 90 Day Cafe in a review about great cupcakes. Whoever wrote that review I'm imagining their pants are on fire as I type.

The cafe itself was quite cute but when we were told to "pick whatever cake you like" from a cake stand in the window I sensed this wasn't going to be a success. Manny put down the first one he picked up as he said it was rock solid.

I opted for...

Which swiftly became...

after my one and only bite. Completely tasteless - devoid of ANY flavour but rancid butter. And hard. Joy.

Manny opted for what we think was....

but we can't be 100% sure - it's the flavour Manny wanted, but Andy Pipkin behind the counter couldn't come out to show us which was which and instead opted for the old point and mutter 'that one' routine. I would like to point out we were the only customers in the place but he still couldn't be bothered to properly explain which cakes were which.

Again this cake was hard, tasteless and just unpleasant. Both cakes were about £2.50 and both were left when we decided to leave.

I have a feeling this sign...

goes some way to explaining why the cakes were so incredibly dry - they must just bake in bulk (or buy in?) and keep them hanging round till they sell. Cupcakes in an hour will not be fresh people! Not sure why they were so tasteless though - I'd imagine a Fruit Pigeons fart would contain more vanilla than my cupcake did.

My review in one sentence - only visit the 90 Day Cafe if you like eating cakes that appear to have hung around the shop for 90 days. Blurgh.

no she wouldn't, my mum has great taste in cakes

While in Birmingham we also tried a couple of cakes from Cupcake Delights in Selfridges - while they weren't the best cupcakes I've had they were edible - but a little sweet for me and the vanilla one was on the dry side, but Manny enjoyed the chocolate one.

Next up a bakery we first visited in February 2010, Chewies. I remember the date as we also visited Bake a Boo that day.

I didn't blog it at the time as my photos were awful, as were the cakes. I was in the area, Chalk Farm, today and needed lunch and coffee and decided to give them another go. Sometimes I want to slap myself for my stupidity.

There were three flavours of cake to choose from; vanilla, chocolate and red velvet. The red velvet looked frankly sweaty so I opted for the lurid blue vanilla. I should've just walked out but to be honest I felt rather conspicuous - I was the only person in the cafe - which btw is really rather cute.

Yes, that layer you see on top was rock hard. So hard when I tried a bit, for research purposes I nearly broke a tooth. HOW OLD are these cakes!!!? I jokingly tweeted that perhaps this cake had been sitting here since my last visit - I'm not so sure it was a joke now. Their website boasts that everything is freshly baked but I am hard pressed to believe this cake wasn't at least a week old - it was that hard.

And the frosting - I had one bite of it and it was so sweet I had toothache for about an hour - it was grainy and thoroughly unpleasant. How any baker can get frosting so wrong is beyond me.

The photo above shows how little I ate of the cake - two members of staff were watching me the whole time (no one came in in the 30mins I was there) yet they didn't ask me if I enjoyed the cake or what was wrong - they just stood there. If it was my business and someone didn't eat my cake I'd want to know why. I can say this is one of the worst cakes I've had - no redeeming features at all. Another £2 + down the drain.

Now - can anyone recommend some good cupcakes, I'm sick of crapcakes.

Wedding cakes and a rather sweet giveaway

2011-07-15T22:24:00.001+01:00

Readers of this blog may recall a couple of months ago I went on a cupcake decorating course with Eloise of Gourmet Cupcake. This week I went on her wedding cake course as I have a couple of weddings booked and I fancied learning some tricks of the trade.

The course was really good - we decorated a three tier top cake and 6 cupcakes - my favourite was embossing the fondant - I love how pretty it looks.

The tier cake not only looked pretty, but tasted lovely as well - we had a slice each and Manny took the rest to work the next day with the cupcakes and they were all scoffed up sharpish.

After all that sweetness, I now have a giveaway for a fantastic event by the chaps famous for their love of jelly - Bompas and Parr.

Bompas and Parr are flooding part of the roof of Selfridges to create a crystal island and boating lake to celebrate the arrival of Truvia® calorie free sweetner.

...encompasses an emerald green boating lake, thousands of stevia plants, 12 rowing boats, a gushing waterfall, a life guard, cocktails by ECC, design by Studio Toogood, uniforms by Tour de Force, tropical soundscapes by Dom James, teas by Rare Tea Company, coffee's by Caravan, and a Crystal Island - all six storeys above Londons busiest shopping street.

Tickets for the Voyage of Discovery are now totally sold out but I have 5 pairs of tickets to give away for the 5.45 - 6.15 slot on Friday 22nd July - you need to be at Selfridges in time for entry and the prize is the tickets only - you need to make your own way to London!

To enter leave a comment below telling me what you would love to learn to bake. Please make sure you leave an email address so the organisers can email you your tickets if you win!

You can get an additional chance to win by following @annecupcake on Twitter and tweet the following message: I've just entered to win #bompasandparr tickets from @annecupcake and you can too. Enter here: http://i-heart-cupcakes.blogspot.com/

Open to Mainland UK residents only. Contest closes at midday Tuesday 19th July. Winners will be announced shortly after.

Happy 4th July

2011-07-04T21:51:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have seen my trial run at my all-American cupcake last week.

It's a rather simple idea - a red white and blue cupcake. Nothing special but it does look kinda fab. And very patriotic.

I just took my favourite vanilla cupcake, and....dyed some red and blue. Simple.

As you can see the colours kind of merged, and the blue on top went kind of green, but when you bite into them there is still a hint of white in there and you can see the three colours. Sorry I don't have a cross section picture - it began to fall over while I took it but you can kinda see how it works.

I had planned to top the cupcake with some red, white and blue fondant hearts to signify I Heart NY (my favourite place in the US..well the world actually), but after a long weekend of working, and getting up at 4am today to open the bakery I just couldn't face fannying about with fondant. Also I couldn't find my small heart cutter and just didn't have the energy to go through my tonne of cupcaking paraphernalia. I did manage to find my USA cupcake cases and toppers that Ann Arbor Dennis brought me back recently though.

So to top the cupcakes my second plan was blueberry and strawberries on top of vanilla frosting, but then I decided to dunk the strawberry in some blue chocolate (Lindt white coloured with food dye) and voila - my perfect all-American cupcake was born.

Happy 4th July everyone!

Welcome to my nightmare

2011-06-26T18:58:00.000+01:00

I was asked by the infamous curator of cake and chaos, Miss Cakehead, to make some blood splattered cupcakes as part of a 'disturbing’ edible experience at the Alice Cooper Freak Show auditions at Hyde Park this Monday 27th June. Yes that's right, cake for metal legend ALICE COOPER!!

The cakes themselves were pretty much a given - what else could they be but (blood) red velvets? I added a little extra red colouring and a little extra vanilla to combat any taste this may add.

The blood proved a little trickier. I first opted to make the cherry 'blood' as featured in A Zombie Ate my Cupcake, but alas it was more like clotted blood and a very odd grey colour so put my thinking cap on and came up with my own blood - raspberry coulis, thickened with a little icing sugar and a bit of red food colouring in it to ensure we got the right colour. Fabulous.

The raspberry coulis blood really added a nice tartness to the red velvets and I really enjoyed it. I'm not usually that much of a fan of cream cheese frosting (ie I can't eat more than one) but the tartness of the raspberries again helped with that, and I would happily include raspberries in these again. Have been thinking of reasons for bloody cupcakes - Mortician cupcakes anyone?

Finally, just wanted to share the centrepiece of the Silent Hill themed exhibition with you all. The nurse cake was made by Laura from Mamma Jamma Cakes and is 100% edible (except for a centre rod to keep her upright - take that Duff!)

Isn't it awesome!

You can read more about the event here.

Best ever chocolate cupcake

2011-06-09T17:54:00.000+01:00

Today is Mr I Heart Cupcakes birthday and as he is a total chocolate addict I decided to make him some double chocolate cupcakes. I originally thought of doing a boozy ganache to stuff them with, making them triple chocolate but thought that might be too much. (I can hear Manny screaming 'nooooooo' as he reads this).

The cakes are based on a recipe from Chocolate by Donna Hay and the frosting is from British Baking by Oliver Peyton.

These are definitely the best chocolate cupcakes I've ever made and went down a treat for Manny's birthday breakfast this morning - they were incredibly moist, very chocolaty and the frosting was amazing!

Happy Birthday Manny!

Peggy's Favourite Cakes & Cookies

2011-06-01T23:58:00.004+01:00

I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of the gorgeous Peggy's Favourite Cakes & Cookies, by Peggy Porschen, some weeks ago and had been planning for some time to bake something magnificent. I'd had my eye on a beautiful heart cake as it seemed apt for the blog, however last weekend when I was due to bake I felt awful and just couldn't face the mammoth task it appeared to be, so...I made some cupcakes and used Peggy's book as inspiration. A bit simpler but just as pretty I think.

I first made some chocolate cupcakes with ganache frosting using Peggy's recipe. The cakes were very flavoursome and very moist, however the ganache was a bit thick so couldn't be piped. I added some Bailey's to thin it out, and although it still wouldn't pipe I liked the Bailey's kick, so I spread it onto the cakes rather than piped, and added some lovely giant flowers I made. The next day we went to photograph them and learnt that sugarpaste does not react well to boozy ganache. I have pictures but they're too heartbreaking, and oozy, to share.

So I decided to start again and make some vanilla cupcakes instead and opted to decorate them with Peggy's favourite themes of butterflies and flowers.

I tried to use Peggy's vanilla cake recipe, but alas it called for medium eggs and I only had large eggs in the house, (infact they were the much derided (on Twitter) Ella Valentine Baking Eggs - seriously the name might be silly but the eggs are great quality and cheaper than a lot of others - and they come in a pink box - I'm easily pleased), so I made my own vanilla cupcake recipe using the large eggs.

The frosting I made again using my own recipe as Peggy's called for half icing sugar, half butter which I found would not form into pipe-able consistency. I've never made frosting with these ratios - has anyone? I've got Peggy's recipes from her Cupcake Masterclass in Sainsbury's Magazine and her frosting calls for my usual ratio of 1/2 butter/cream cheese to icing sugar. I wonder is this an error in the preview copies of the book?

Despite these niggles, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to make prettier cakes. It is not particularly a book for people looking for recipes, there aren't many in here at all, just a few basic ones that you can adapt for each project, but the book is beautiful and full of great ideas for cookies,miniature cakes, large cakes and cupcakes. Each project whether it is a cookie or a giant tiered cake has detailed instructions on what items you require to make it and there are lots of diagrams for larger projects. The book also includes quantity guides for cake making, which is helpful if you only wanted to make one of the mini cakes, rather than 18, and some really helpful tutorials for making sugar roses and other decorating items. This book is definitely for the cake baker who wants to progress slightly further - you will need to buy some equipment, such as cutters, boards, and specialised items, but if you want to make cakes as pretty as Peggy's it is worth it. She even has a two page spread of the equipment you are most likely to need which I found very helpful.

As well as the book, Quadrille were kind enough to allow me to ask Peggy a few questions via email.

1. How did you get into baking, and what are your favourite things to bake?

I was always given a fabulous cake every year on my birthday as a child growing up in Germany which is a nation that loves cake! The cake was always the highlight for me and even then I was incredibly passionate about both the taste and the look. When I was 14 yrs. old I decided to make my own and it really just started from there. After finishing school I moved to London in 1998 to study at the internationally renowned cookery school Le Cordon Bleu. After successfully completing ‘The Grand Diploma of Cuisine & Patisserie’, I worked as a pastry chef at London's Lanesborough Hotel and celebrated caterer Rhubarb Food Design, followed by a position as cake decorator for German master-baker Gerhard Jenne, proprietor of Konditor & Cook. I set up my business in 2003 from my home in Battersea, which I eventually had to move out of as the business grew and grew.

My passion still lies with wedding cakes and my favourite I have ever made was my own wedding cake which was perfect. It was absolutely beautiful, elegant and incredibly pretty, intricate without being over the top, the classic and traditional was softened with a satin bow. I designed it and was helped by one of my team to make it. It tied in perfectly with the wedding and was actually inspired by my laser cut wedding stationary and flowers.

Bryn and Peggy's wedding cake (sent by Peggy Porschen PR)

2. Apart from your own cakes have you any other favourite bakeries?

Wendy Kromer for her original, innovative approach. She uses unusual tools and materials and you get a real sense of her Parisian patisserie background and European flair just by looking at the designs.
Ron Ben-Israel for the most outstanding sugar flowers I have ever seen – he is simply the best.
Sylvia Weinstock – she deserves a lifetime achievement award for her contribution to the industry, just consistently incredible

3. What are the five kitchen essentials you recommend for any budding bakers?

A good mixer such as Kenwood or KitchenAid
Always use good quality butter, it makes a real difference to the end product
I find PME
Squires Kitchen Flower Paste
Cake Smoothers I couldn’t live without for that professional flawless finish.

4. What is your favourite flavour of cupcake and frosting?

My cravings change with the seasons but at the moment I am obsessing over my sticky toffee cupcakes which are sold at the Peggy Porschen Parlour, they are incredibly comforting, with a gooey toffee centre and nutty sponge - I just can’t resist.

If you'd like to visit Peggy's Parlour I highly recommend it - it's the most perfect little cupcake cafe I've been to. You can read about my visit here.

Peggy's Favourite Cakes & Cookies is out on June 6th.

Oh and I will make that heart cake - it's too pretty not to!

Cupcake decorating and a gift from the Fairy Hobmother

2011-05-27T23:46:00.000+01:00

I've been a bit lax at blogging lately, sorry, but as some of you may know I've been busy setting up a business I Heart Cupcakes to sell my own cupcakes. I've finally tired of buying bad cupcakes and have decided to give it a go myself. More details about it will follow soon, but for now you can check out my holding website I Heart Cupcakes for info about how to buy my cakes.

As mentioned in a previous blog, my first stall is going to be at Going for a Song Vintage jumble at the Amersham Arms next Saturday, June 4th. I aim to have 5 or so flavours there so hope some of you can come along and taste them! There is an offer available for the event via my website so please check out the events section if you plan to come along. It's free entry and is in a pub, so you can enjoy a pint or a coffee/tea with your cake, and from the other vendors I've seen it will include some fabulous clothes and jewellery.

Anyhow, in anticipation of baking for others, including a wedding I've been asked to do, I thought I'd do a course at one of my favourite cupcake bakers, The Gourmet Cupcake Company. Originally I was just going to do the wedding and fondant masterclass course, however I thought I'd do the original course as well and I'm so glad I did. Eloise is a great teacher, the classes were really informal but very informative. We baked cakes, learning some insider secrets, and then got to decorating. Although this is perhaps more for a beginner, even as an experienced baker I learned some new techniques and I really recommend her courses for everyone. I can't wait for my wedding course next month - just looking at the lovely cupcakes Eloise has made for previous weddings has me all excited as to what I'm going to make!

As well as making exciting cupcakes, and business planning, I've also been lucky enough to be visited by the Appliances Online Fairy Hobmother. Appliances Online offer everything from cookers to my ultimate want for my kitchen, the pink Smeg fridge, and after I'd left a comment on Eat Like A Girl's blog post the Fairy Hobmother visited me with a prize. I didn't win an appliance (boo!) but I was chosen to carry on the gifting chain and was awarded some Amazon vouchers (yay!) - something I will always use. I'm still thinking of what to buy, perhaps Molly Bakes new Cake Pops book. Any suggestions for great baking books I need to own? Never mind shoes, I can never have too many cookbooks.

As I'm carrying on the chain, the Fairy Hobmother is offering a lucky commenter on this blog a prize so please leave a comment below to be in with a chance to win a lovely gift from him. Perhaps you could share with us your favourite item in your kitchen - I'm going with my gorgeous pink Kitchenaid.

Leave a comment by Friday June 3rd to win. Good luck.

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts

2011-05-25T22:31:00.002+01:00

These raspberry and coconut cupcakes are slightly adapted from a recipe in another of my recent additions to my groaning cook book shelves, Oliver Peyton's, British Baking. The book is full of recipes that make your mouth water - I have a lot of markers on pages of recipes I must make asap, but as soon as I saw these cupcakes I knew I had to make them - two of my favourite ingredients in cupcake form = delicious.

The cakes were very straightforward to make and I pretty much followed the recipe. Next time I would add more coconut though as I thought the taste was quite subtle. I didn't get 12 cupcakes but rather 8, and they were domed within the cases, not huge - perhaps if you use smaller cases you'd get 12.

Once the cupcakes cooled slightly, I brushed them with one of my new favourite liqueurs, Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur. I have brushed this onto cupcakes a couple of times now and I love it - it gives a little kick to your cake.

The frosting was a coconut Swiss meringue which was delicious. I often find that Swiss meringue frosting tastes of nothing but butter when I've bought cupcakes in shops that offer it, however this one was really nice, although the coconut milk didn't give it enough of a coconut kick and I think next time I'd put in less vanilla, and a bit of coconut extract.

They still tasted divine though, and I would definitely make these again. I used Tulameen raspberries which gave a lovely flavour to the cakes and really contrasted with the sweetness of the cake.

If you'd like to try these cupcakes you can come along to the Going for a Song vintage clothes jumble on June 4th at the Amersham Arms in New Cross where I'll be selling my cupcakes, including these.

Finally I thought I'd share these lovely wrappers the people at Cupcake Wrappers sent me.

The wrappers come in lots of different designs, including my favourite featuring cute needlework birds. The wrappers are washable and reusable and I think they'd be really nice for a display of your cupcakes. And it helps cover up when your cases go see through when baked (hello Cath Kidston)

Eurovision Kuchen

2011-05-14T20:11:00.000+01:00

Even though I'm a heavy metal girl through and through it has been a tradition in my life to watch Eurovision every year - mainly with a bottle of alcohol and lots of tv treats, so this year I thought I'd bake up something delicious to scoff while we watch.

As you may know tonight the UK is being represented by Blue - a band that I only really know of because I think Lee Ryan is an utter knob. Google him and read some of his 'thoughts' and you'll realise why. Oh yeah and another one of them thinks it's acceptable to urinate in the street. While using a cash machine. Twat.

However I couldn't resist making some Eurovision cupcakes in their honour - well I had a glut of fruit to use up and ta da....

the Blue cupcake was born. It is basically a basic vanilla cupcake with some puréed blueberries in it and a dash of blue food colouring. Then they are covered in a lemon buttercream frosting. And they are quite delicious.

Now I must dash and watch Eurovision - fingers crossed something as good as Lordi is amongst the usual tosh!!

But just quickly.....originally I was going to merge my blue cupcakes with Friday 13th cupcakes but we spent yesterday at the eye hospital so didn't get a chance to make them - however I did make my toppers out of white chocolate, coloured grey. Aren't they gruesome?

Cupcakes Violet Beauregarde aka Blueberry cupcakes!

2011-05-08T19:41:00.001+01:00

I tweeted that these were some of the most delicious cupcakes I've ever made, and I hand on heart was not lying.

I had originally bought blueberries to try my hand at some blue velvets as I keep seeing them and think they look really fun, and perfect for boys who like cupcakes. However, I kept thinking back to the amazing blueberry and lemon cupcake I had from Ottolenghi and decided to have a go a recreating it!

First I made a compote which is incredibly easy (this makes a lot you could probably half it - or use the leftovers with yogurt for breakfast?)

Blueberry compote
175g fresh blueberries
50g caster sugar (I used golden)

Cook over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally, until the blueberries begin to pop and then remove from heat and leave to cool.

Next the cupcakes. They are a plain vanilla cupcake, using my favourite 'go to' recipe - however I had no milk in the house so instead used organic natural yogurt and it worked a treat (I'll give the measurements for both below).

Anne's favourite vanilla cupcakes
125g golden caster sugar
125g unsalted butter (room temp)
125g self raising flour
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons milk (I substituted approx 2.5 tablespoons yogurt - until I got dropping consistency)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees - I have a fan oven, and an oven thermometer (which I recommend everyone gets - the oven thermometer I mean).

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla together with your mixer until light and fluffy. I do this for about 10mins to get a lot of air in.

Add the eggs, one by one and mix.

Mix in the flour and baking powder - I do this by hand as find the mixer knocks the air out of the flour and it makes a lighter cake. Than add the milk, or yogurt, and mix until all combined.

Scoop into cases using an ice cream scoop or a tablespoon. I get 10 large cupcakes out of this recipe - you can get 12 smaller ones though, it depends on your cases. In my oven these take just under 20 minutes. I find the house tends to smell of lovely baking and they're ready. They are ready when you can stick a cake tester/cocktail stick in and it comes out clean.

Remove from oven and transfer immediately to a wire cooling rack.

Once cooled, use an apple corer to remove the centre of the cake and fill with a hearty amount of your cooled compote.

As you can see I didn't always hit the centre, but it's ok as you're going to cover them in lashings of delicious lemon frosting.

Best ever lemon frosting
100g cream cheese (full fat not light!)
40g unsalted butter, room temp
250g icing sugar (See note below)
lemon juice
lemon extract (I use Star Kay White)

Mix the butter and cream cheese for about 2 minutes in your mixer. Add icing sugar and then mix for about another 2 or 3 mins until smooth. Add lemon juice and some lemon essence to taste - I put in a few drops lemon juice and approx 1/2 a teaspoon to 1 teaspoon of lemon extract - tasting as I went. You want it to taste lemon'y and each persons taste buds are different.
Note: I added about two more tablespoons of icing sugar while adding the lemon extract as it thinned it out - you want it to be of piping consistency, ie not too runny!

Pipe onto the cupcakes and then plop a lovely blueberry on top and enjoy with a lovely cup of tea and decide whether they are the best cupcakes you have ever made. I think they're my favourites.

Finally, when making these I decided to test out some new Cath Kidston cupcake cases I got a while ago.

As you can see they were NOT worth the money. I'm a massive fan of Cath Kidston, I know it's a cliché to be a cupcake fan and love Cath but there you go, however these pretty much went translucent on baking. Not happy.

Real Food Festival cupcakes - must try harder

2011-05-06T22:30:00.000+01:00

Yesterday myself and Manny headed over to the Real Food Fest at Earls Court. We tried three cupcake companies in all. There were about four or five people selling cupcakes but we couldn't face that many - especially as we wanted to try some other food as well. As it turned out we only actually ate one each -the others went in the bin.

First, the good.

Sweet Things are based in Primrose Hill and although they don't have a store you can order online or buy at their local market stall at weekends.

The lovely Japanese girl behind the counter recognised us from being in Camden a couple of weeks ago and was incredibly friendly. We opted to have a cupcake each as pudding to our fabulous Bhangra Burger we'd had for lunch.

There was a lovely choice of flavours and I went against my normal first cupcake at a new company (vanilla), and opted for a strawberry cheesecake cupcake.

The cake was incredibly fresh and moist, and the frosting was a lovely tart cream cheese frosting with a strawberry drizzle and biscuit topping. I loved it - and made quite a mess scoffing it.

Manny, no surprises here, opted for a double chocolate cake and was so overwhelmed by how good it was I had to post a pic of him on Twitter enjoying his cake!

Second up, the bad.

This is a chocolate cupcake from Cupcake-A-Licious, a Surrey based cupcake company. Firstly it looks a little squished as I refused to pay £1 for a box for a £2 cupcake to take it home, so we re-used the cupcake boxes from Sweet Things which I happened to still have in my bag. I get very perturbed about paying extra for a box -surely this should be worked into costs?

Anyhow, our cupcake was a Chocolate Delight - a delectable chocolate sponge accompanies by an oooh so irresistible chocolate butter icing according to their advertising material. According to me, and Manny it was a rather dry, flavourless cake, with a really unpleasant frosting. It tasted artificial somehow, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't butter in there, or chocolate. It tasted like Stork and cocoa powder. I resisted it and it went in the bin after a couple of bites.

Finally, the ugly.

Ok, ugly is a bit harsh but it's not exactly tempting is it? This is a white chocolate and raspberry cupcake from Monkey Poodle, a London based baking company. Again there was no box for the cake, we were offered a bag or a napkin so alas it got squished. It had previously looked like this.

According to their website, our cupcake was; One of our favourite combos, creamy white chocolate (chunks of) and fresh raspberries in vanilla sponge topped with swirls of buttercream icing.

When we divided up the cake to share there was an odd smell about the cake, and the frosting texture was wrong. I'm still convinced it was a Swiss meringue frosting, or an attempt at one, rather than buttercream as it tasted like a glob of sugary uncooked meringue. And it got no better after the frosting - the cake had an incredibly grainy texture and Manny bit into something unpleasant which was a chunk of not very nice white chocolate. It was devoid of any pleasant flavour, apart from the raspberry so, alas. another one for the Brabinta.

All in all a very disappointing day for cupcakes at the Real Food Fest.

A couple of points. If you're going to sell an easily damageable food item at a festival where people are coming to buy goods and take it home, offering boxes is really a good idea, or you end up with photos of your cupcakes looking kinda sad on peoples websites. Also trying to be polite could be a way forward. We tried to engage in conversation with one stall owner and asked her what her company had been named after, which led to a bit of a dramatic sigh and a "oh everyone asks that" ...well yes, perhaps people do but perhaps you could think of an interesting way to engage the customer with the story of why rather than sigh, especially when no-one else was buying your cakes! Another stall holder was busy reading and when we stopped to buy she kept reading and barely glanced up, so we didn't buy her cupcakes. Finally, I noticed that people seem to be relying more and more on glitter and gimmicks like wearing 50s clothing to sell their cupcakes (hello there is only one Ms C!!), rather than ensuring their cakes taste good and use good ingredients, which is sad.

We also sampled a couple of other baked goods at the festival - an Oreo brownie from Outsider Tart and Manny had a millionaire shortbread from The Desert Deli. Both stalls could teach the others a great deal -they were friendly, chatting to customers, explaining about what they had to offer etc, and both items were delicious and flavoursome.

Oh and if you go, do try the buffalo milk ice cream at Laverstoke, say hello to the calves and lambs for me and don't miss the dancing sheep truck at the back! And the lovely English couple living in France brewing real ale are delightful! And if you try any cupcakes do let me know!

Cinnamon Churro Cupcakes for Cinco de Mayo

2011-05-05T22:49:00.000+01:00

Today is Cinco de Mayo, a day of celebration for Mexicans worldwide and I decided to celebrate with a churro cupcake.

Instead of just making a cupcake and shoving a churro on top, I decided to try and recreate the flavour of a churro in cupcake form.

I used my favourite vanilla recipe and substituted the usual caster sugar with a the cinnamon sugar I picked up in Waitrose. I also added some more fairtrade cinnamon to taste as I wanted it to be quite cinnamon'y.

I then topped them with some sugar frosting, inspired by something I read in my Who you Calling Cupcake book. Basically normal frosting with some sugar folded into it. I opted to use the cinnamon sugar again and it was actually quite nice but incredibly sweet.

Now as you know churros are only good when you dunk them into a load of chocolate (or if you're lucky and in Wahaca a tequilla chocolate shot - yum), so I drizzled them with some lovely Green and Blacks melted chocolate and behold..churro cupcakes.

So how were they? One word sums them up - sweet!! Two words is even better - too sweet. Manny really enjoyed the cake part, and it was nice and moist, but a little too sweet for me. Also while the sugar gave the frosting a good crunchy effect of biting into a churro, it was also a little too sweet, although this was offset by the bitterness of dark chocolate. Not a cupcake I'd make again, but it was worth an experiment and great if you have a sweet tooth - Manny ate two! Next time I'll stick to a Mexican hot chocolate cupcake!

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Bakery at County Hall

2011-05-01T18:59:00.000+01:00

I posted this image on my Twitter feed yesterday and got quite a lot of questions asking me where I was. Isn't it lovely?

We chanced upon, Bakery County Hall, on our way to the South Bank food market yesterday and I'm so glad we spotted the macaron tower in the window which is what made us explore further. It is a charming, quite large, cafe/bakery housed at the back of County Hall, away from the river.

We took a peak inside and I saw all the pretty pink things, and packages of meringues tied up with ribbon hanging from the ceiling and I was sold - we had to go inside.

There were even little jars of cupcakes dotted around. So cute!

The place itself is quite large with a lot of seating -when we arrived there was one other group there, but it quickly filled out as passers by spotted it! There is a kitchen at one end, where people were baking away happily, and there was a good variety of sweet and savoury food. We of course opted for sweet. There were two cupcake flavours available, chocolate with vanilla frosting and raspberry. I opted for raspberry and Manny opted for a slice of a cake called Chocolate Delight. I'd have been surprised after seeing it if he hadn't.

As you can see my cupcake had a LOT of frosting. Manny was rather taken with the cake to frosting ratio, and I was trying to get a picture of the cross section once I'd taken a bite, well a forkful, even my mouth isn't that big, but it was so top heavy it kept falling over! I'm happy to say it tasted fabulous! It was fresh, and although the cake was a little dry I think it was due to perhaps over-mixing rather than staleness as it tasted lovely. The frosting had a lovely raspberry flavour and was delicious. I started picking off the pearls as I thought they were those hard balls that are every dentists delight, but they were in fact little chocolate shells.

Manny's cake was, again, delicious and aptly named. It was a delightfully sinful chocolate cake, fresh and very chocolaty. And as you can see the friendly waitress didn't skimp when it came to portioning it up either.

And it wasn't just us enjoying the Bakery offerings - when Manny went the loo, a female traffic warden sitting at the other side of the cafe started talking to him about how great his scones were, slightly confusing the poor boy. It turns out she'd loved the food there and wanted to congratulate him - not sure why a scruffy chap in a Cocksparrer tshirt looked liked he worked there...bless.

I only have one negative comment about the Bakery - the pricing was quite steep. Two cakes and a small cappuccino and a small mug of peppermint tea came in at just under £15 - slightly expensive but the coffee was nice, as was the cake, and you are in a predominantly tourist area. But something to bear in mind.

I will definitely visit again. The cafe was a lovely little oasis of cuteness and calm away from the crowds in the area, definitely somewhere you could while away some of the day with a good book and a bit of cake.

Next time I go I'll try and get some better photos of the meringues - although it was very light inside the photographs of the windows came out very dark!

Let them eat cake

2011-04-29T17:17:00.000+01:00

This month Sarah aka Maison Cupcake has handed over the reigns of Forever Nigella to Mardi of the lovely blog Eat. Live. Travel. Write. As you may have noticed there was a wedding earlier today, so of course the theme for Forever Nigella was Royal Street Party, and, no great surprise here, I couldn't resist making cake.

I also couldn't resist buying up all the baking tat on offer to celebrate the wedding that I could lay my hands on - including these adorable cases and toppers. I love the corgi one - he appears to be saying "get orf my land commoner".

As you can see I may also have bought some Emma Bridgewater napkins. I hang my head in shame at being so suckered in to this. My house is awash with Union Jacks and a stash of royal wedding memorabilia I bought for my Canadian friend including this - the cutest royal wedding item I've seen.

And even though I wasn't bothered and had gotten sick of the wedding talk on tv, I admit it - I ended up watching it on the tv this morning and having a little sob - underneath this potty mouthed front lurks a romantic at heart! Then again, I do cry at everything - even adverts.

Enough of this wedding faff - what about the cakes. First up is an English classic - the Victoria sponge. Cupcaked. From How to Be A Domestic Goddess this recipe is, as usual for Nigella, a doddle to follow. I've made many a Victoria sponge, but never substituted some of the flour for cornflour before and it really did make a difference - the cake was incredibly moist and wonderfully light.

I managed to get about 16 cupcakes out of the mix, and they took about 20 minutes to bake. I added some extra vanilla to the mix as I love a good vanilla'y sponge. I did toy with putting some blueberries inside the layers to get the red, white and blue effect, however I'm not that keen on blueberries and I like my Victoria sponge the old fashioned way. However I did go against the WI train of thought on Victoria sponges, and put jam and cream inside - I know they advocate jam only filling but I couldn't resist filling it with lashings of oooozing extra thick Jersey cream. Lets face it if you can't oooooze cream during a Nigella bake off when can you?

Next up I decided to make a fun cupcake version of Prince William's groomsman cake. BTW, when did this American phenomenon come here? Anyways, this cake has been the subject of lots of media coverage as William has opted for something rather unusual for a celebration cake - a version of his childhood favourite, refrigerator cake with rich tea biscuits and chocolate 'baked' by McVities. Nigella has a version of this cake in Express - the rocky road bar, using rich tea biscuits so I had to give it a go. Again, kinda, cupcaked.

The Palace had told McVities they could use whatever chocolate they liked and I decided to use a mix of Green and Blacks dark and some of their lovely butterscotch as it's one of my favourite bars and I felt the dark chocolate might be a bit bitter.

I didn't have enough marshmallows to follow Nigella's recipe so I did what I always do when in doubt and threw in a few chopped up Reese's Peanut Butter cups and then topped the lot with some popping candy. Warning if you plan to do this the popping candy occasionally pops when it hits the chocolate - some flew out of the fridge and hit me on the nose which was quite a shock.

Once they had set I removed them from their little cases and assembled them into a three tier wedding cake - just as I imagine the cake looked today.

Not the prettiest looking cake, and I have to say a bit too much chocolate for me but Manny has been enjoying them and the popping candy fascinates the cats.

So I hope you all enjoyed the Royal Wedding and oooh and ahh'd at her dress, I know I did. And I hope you had some lovely cake to eat while you watched it. What did everyone think of the actual cake by Fiona Cairns? It's very pretty but a little plain for me. But then I'm only a commoner!

Easter bunny cupcakes

2011-04-24T15:00:00.000+01:00

I wasn't really going to bother with Easter cupcakes as our house was already overflowing after a baking frenzy last week (more to come on that in another post), however I got a new tip and had a glut of clementines in the house so decided last night to whip up something delicious with a slight Easter theme!

The cupcakes themselves were based on a lovely recipe I saw on fellow cake enthusiast The Caked Crusader's blog. The recipe can be found here - I halved it and got 6 cupcakes and instead of using orange juice I used the juice of lots of freshly squeezed clementines. Simple.

I used my own vanilla frosting recipe, halved and replaced the milk with clementine juice. Then came the fun part - piping with my new nozzle. Well it would've been fun if it hadn't been about 100 degrees in my kitchen and the frosting wasn't going soupy after a couple of minutes. I persevered and it kind of worked - but the heat still kept melting it when on the cupcake, so I went against everything I believe and put them in the fridge to stay non-soupy and set about the very simple decoration I planned.

Warning the photographs below contain scenes of bunny decapitation - look away now if easily shocked!

First you take one of these

the delicious Malteaster bunny shaped treat from Malteser. Now unwrap him....

and then...

chop his head off with a lovely pink knife. Or any knife you have. The main point is you must decapitate the bunny.

After this it's pretty straightforward. Take your cupcake and sit the decapitated bunny head on top amongst your grassy frosting. Again, simple.

As you can see my grass frosting didn't quite work out as I'd hoped but I know it will next time - when my kitchen isn't warmer than the centre of the earth! It still manages to look rather cute in my opinion - especially when you remove the cases.

And as for the taste - you can see from the yearning in the Lindt Bunnies eyes he wants one because they taste really good. The clementine juice gives a really moist cake, it's possibly one of the moistest cakes I've made. The flavour was rather subtle (the outside of the clementines weren't really good enough to grate some peel in as I would usually have done), but really tasty.

If you're a bit too squeamish to chop the head off a bunny for your own cupcake pleasure then feel free to decorate in any other way you choose.

Finally, I can confirm the bunny was still decapitated this morning, it had not, in the spirit of Easter re-attached it's head and 'come back to life'. So we ate it.

Let them eat cupcakes

2011-04-21T22:25:00.000+01:00

I know, I know, I'm not fussed either, but it would seem some of you are! So if you are excited about the Wedding, and about cupcakes (and if you aren't excited about cupcakes not sure why you're reading this blog!) then this could be the perfect t-shirt for you.

Available from Cupcake Betty.

An-Tea Establishment

2011-04-20T15:33:00.000+01:00

As mentioned in the last post I'm not that fussed about the Royal Wedding but I do like cake, and punk. Which means I really want to go to the An-Tea Establishment afternoon tea at the Met bar. It looks right up my street, I love rhubarb and custard cupcakes! And macaroons. And roly poly.

Savoury dishes include ‘quiche a la fergie’, breadless cucumber sandwiches, prawn cocktails and a warm Wensleydale cheese & pickle muffin. For those with a sweet tooth, ‘strawberries & cream’ macaroons, rhubarb & custard cupcakes, organic compote roly-poly and many more all feature on our delicious hand-made menu.

Available for a limited period between 22nd April - 8th May, 3-6pm. Price £27 + service charge (12.5%) per person. All reservations must be made at least 24 hours in advance.

Anyone want to come with me, doubt Manny will fancy it. You can have my prawns (I'm allergic)

Anarchy in the UK

2011-04-19T20:02:00.001+01:00

Photo copyright Nathan Pask 2011

You are much more likely to find me at a (yes I know they've sold out now but never the less I like them) Sex Pistols gig than watching the Royal Wedding, however a Royal Wedding event organised by the wonderful Miss Cakehead has caught my eye!

Will and Cake is a Royal Wedding inspired pop up cake shop for one day only, Thursday 28th April, at Maiden in Shoreditch. A host of bakers will be selling their goods there, including the awesome Molly Bakes. Get there early and stock up on cupcakes and cake pops to enjoy while you watch the wedding on Friday. Or not, as the case may be! The shop opens at 11am and will close when the cakes sell out - if previous events are anything to go by they'll sell out quick!

If Will and Cake doesn't excite you, how about a more traditional wedding offering from Fiona Cairns, who as you may know has been chosen to make the wedding cake for Wills and Kate.

Fiona is of course making the traditional style cake for the wedding, not the rich tea and chocolate fridge cake that everyone seems to be a great topic of discussion in the cake world. She has also teamed up with Sainsbury's with these exclusive boxes of 9 red, white and blue commemorative cupcakes for those who prefer a more traditional style of cake. According to her website, Fiona's company bakes 27,000 cupcakes a week! Eek. I'd still call these fairy cakes myself (buttercream = cupcake v icing = fairy cake) but that is still a lot of cake! I've had Fiona's cakes a couple of times and they've always been light and moist. And my delicious sticky toffee cupcakes recipe is adapted from a Fiona Cairns recipe.

Sainsbury's have given me a box of these cupcakes to give away to one lucky, UK based, blog reader. For a chance to win a box, to be sent to you direct from Sainsbury's, please leave a comment below, with contact details if you don't have a blog link (twitter, email etc). If you would like an additional chance to win please tweet a link to this post and let me know that you have done so, so your name can be entered twice. Closing date for entries is Monday 25th April at noon.

Update: the winner chosen at random via the random generator was Mel! Congrats and I hope you enjoy them!

Vegan D'oh!nuts and cupcakes at Ms Cupcake

2011-04-16T22:44:00.002+01:00

I've been meaning to visit the new Ms Cupcake store in Brixton since the opening day on April 1st but hangovers, holidays and life in general has gotten in the way till today.

Firstly please accept my apologies for the pics - I forgot my camera, was using my iPhone, and the sun was shining directly into the store so everything pretty much had my reflection in it...grrrr. But, the sun shining is a good thing - the shop is a great sun trap with windows on three sides making it light and lovely. It is also much bigger than I thought it would be, with some lovely tables outside so you can enjoy your vegan goodies there and then, with drinks from Rosie's Deli next door if you choose (not sure if they do vegan drinks - sorry!).

When I arrived fellow cupcake blogger Kelly of An American Cupcake in London had just arrived, and Jason immediately started preparing a plate of goodies for us to try, including the item that had ensured we both visited today - the vegan doughnuts.

As readers will know I'm already a fan of Ms C's cupcakes, so after reading yesterday on Twitter that they were now doing doughnuts I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try something different. We got 3 mini doughnuts each (I like to call them doughnut middles as they seem like the little bit you'd poke out of a ring doughnut - is that weird?) - sugar, cinnamon and Boston cream. All three were nice, the cinnamon was very cinnamon'y, and the Boston cream was definitely my favourite. We also got two cookie sandwiches; a vanilla filled and a chocolate filled. I ate the vanilla one there but just couldn't manage any more and took the chocolate one home to share with Manny. It was delicious - I preferred the chocolate cookie to the vanilla (unusual for me!).

Jason came out and had a chat with us and told us how busy they'd been and how they had lots of plans for other vegan treats - the whole time people going in and buying cupcakes and goodies. It was really nice to see it doing so well - the staff were incredibly busy!

Before leaving we checked out the cupcake range and each bought a key lime cupcake (they looked too nice to resist). I also bought Manny a chocolate sprinkled doughnut and we headed off into Brixton Market. Thanks to Ms C's advice I saved myself a lot of money and managed to pick up a mini bundt tin for £2 in one of those 'pound' shop places. It had a vast array of trays so if you want to know where it was let me know. Also if you're looking for a human sized saucepan Brixton Market is your place.

I walked Kelly back to the station and did some more shopping, and managed to find banana extract - something I've been searching everywhere for. Yay!

When Manny came home we tried out my takeaway goodies.

First up the chocolate doughnut. Manny and I really enjoyed it (I particularly liked the chocolate coating), but felt it needed to be a little bit more sticky and doughnut'y. Still really nice but I did prefer the little stuffed ones.

The key lime cupcake was AMAZING! Really moist, citrus'y and flavoursome, you can tell they were baked fresh and not sat on a shelf for days. The fabulous shocking green frosting was really tart, packed full of flavour, and not overly sweet, but instead refreshing. Oh, and there was LOTS of it! A much needed great cupcake after yesterdays shocker!

Every time I eat one of Ms C's cupcakes I'm trying to figure out how she makes things taste so good without my favourite baking ingredient, butter. Perhaps I need to sit outside watching them bake all day to see what I can pick up!

I highly recommend people pop over to the Brixton store, 408 Coldhabour Lane, Brixton, London SW9 8LF, to pick up a cupcake or two! You might spot me outside trying to learn a vegan baking secret or two!

We don't need no vegetation

2011-04-15T23:47:00.000+01:00

In February I reported about a new cupcake* company on the block, Petit Pois, who were aiming to make us less tubby cupcake eaters with their healthy take on the cupcake. Their USP is that their cupcakes are healthy, gluten and lactose free and less than 180 kcal per cupcake, oh as the packaging reminds us "there are more grated vegetables in these magical cakes than any other ingredient".

I was slightly sceptical of these as they just seemed to be bandwagon jumping - eventually someone always comes out with the healthy version of everything, but in the name of blog research I finally got round to popping along to Selfridges yesterday to buy some.

There were two flavour combinations available - lemon and orange, or vanilla and chocolate. As readers of this blog know, we always opt for vanilla and chocolate so this was perfect. I paid my £5 and carried them home.

As you can see they like to remind you that these cakes are HEALTHY cakes. As if the lack of a giant wodge of buttercream isn't reminder enough.

First up the vanilla.

The vanilla cupcake contains 29% courgette and a lot of other stuff including rice flour (13%). I am not sure if it was the rice flour that made it taste funky, or as Manny put it HORRIFIC, but there was most definitely something wrong with this cupcake. It was VILE. I couldn't even swallow my first bite of sponge and rather disgustingly had to spit it into my hand. Their was an indescribably offensive taste to the cake and the texture was revolting - it kind of broke up in your mouth and was so unpleasant I just couldn't swallow it. I tried some of the fondant topping, which I thought couldn't be bad. I was wrong - it was repulsive. The ingredients include lots of stuff like agar, locust bean gum, glucose syrup - I'm not sure which of them made it taste overly sweet and really unpleasant but it certainly didn't taste like anything healthy.

More than three quarters of the cake ended up in the bin (Manny swallowed his bite!). So that's a cupcake with less than 180 calories - and I just saved myself all of those calories. Is this how they stop making you fat(ter)? by making them too disgusting to eat?

Next the chocolate.

The chocolate cupcake contains 29% beetroot and again to me tasted weird. Manny said it was chocolaty but I couldn't really get it at all, perhaps because chocolate is the 3rd last listed ingredient? In fairness cocoa powder is slightly higher, as the 5th last but still to me tasted incredibly wrong. The fondant again tasted odd and cloying and the texture of the cake was again flaky and unpleasant in your mouth. At least I managed to swallow my bite of this one. Manny ate it, but he also said it had a cabbage like taste. I asked Manny if he'd eat another of the chocolate ones and he said no, he also refused to take a second bite of the vanilla one to describe it further.

Also, both cakes seemed pretty stale to me - but that could just be the lack of any kind of moisture giving ingredient.

So there you have it - vegetable cupcakes are gross.

Execpt they aren't. I've made beetroot cupcakes before and they're delicious. I've bought courgette cupcakes that rock and let's not forget sprouts. And it's not the lack of things like milk and butter either - hello, Ms Cupcakes cakes are vegan and don't make me spit up. My opinion is that these cupcakes just try so hard to be healthy they've forgotten that the end product has to be tasty and edible. They may be healthy, but to me they seem like a fad, a way to make money off those poor Stylist readers who so want to eat cupcakes and be thin. My advice, if you're dieting don't eat cupcakes all the time but treat yourself to a proper one occasionally -these really are not a substitute for real cake. I really hope others agree and these horrific excuses for cake are off our shelves soon. However I have a horrid feeling magazines like Stylist and other fashionista types will keep them going. Although the one good sign that people may have more taste was that I was the only twonk buying these (there were lots of boxes of these going out of date v.soon unsold) while everyone else ooh'd and aaaah'd over Lola's display - how I'm kicking myself now I didn't go there instead!!

Finally, as you may recall our cat Angel LOVES cupcakes and usually we can't keep her away - however this picture speaks a thousand words.

When Pudding Cat refuses to move towards the cake you know you have a bad 'un!

*Btw I've called these cupcakes throughout my review as this is what they are marketed as. In my opinion they are fairy cakes - buttercream on top = cupcake, fondant on top = fairy cake.

I Heart Cupcakes goes to Madrid

2011-04-13T23:06:00.000+01:00

We recently popped to Madrid for a long weekend to see Manowar and rather than just hang around seeing the usual sights and eating Tapas we opted instead to see the 6 month old baby twin pandas, De De and Po, at Madrid Zoo, and, of course, eat some cupcakes.

This was my second visit to Madrid, and alas again we didn't make it to Cupcake Madrid (we opted to go and see De De and Po again on the Monday instead - they were too cute not to see again!), but we did make it to two others.

First up was Happy Day Bakery - a cute little bakery that sells American goods, was about 5 minutes away from our hotel in Malasaña.

We were hoping to enjoy a cold drink and a cupcake when we arrived but alas there were only two seats, which were occupied, so although this claims to be a cafe I'd say it's a bakery where if you're lucky you can sit down. At night I think you can buy hot dogs and baked goods from the little window on the right of the picture till the small hours.

The bakery inside was very cute and very retro. The guy serving behind the counter was dressed in a 60s style uniform and it all added to the kitsch factor. The cakes looked quite pretty and homemade. Afer some deliberation (we didn't understand some of the flavours), we opted for an Oreo for Manny and a vanilla cake topped with dulce de leche for me - I can't resist that stuff.

My cake came topped with a home made marshmallow dipped in something (candy melts?) I wasn't sure but it tasted good and I snuffled it all. The cake itself was fresh but had a rather odd scent/taste to it - like almond rather than vanilla, perhaps due to the essence being used rather than extract? While the cake tasted ok, and fresh, it was just too sweet for me with the topping - which was like the sweetest dulce de leche ever. I can eat that stuff with a spoon but alas this was too sweet for me, but Manny, and his incredibly sweet tooth, rescued the day and ate it!

Manny's oreo cupcake was again fresh and quite tasty, but again for me too sweet. The frosting was again incredibly sweet -it's like they don't use any butter, just sugar and some other melted sugar to mix it! I think the Oreo on top was home made as well - and I had a nibble and it was really nice.

If you have a sweet tooth, and are in Madrid, I recommend you pop by Happy Bakery, but I probably wouldn't bother again - except to buy Manny cake!

Next up was Saturday's cupcake find. We'd been out drinking till quite late at the Lemmy Bar in the metal friendly area Arguelles, and Manny couldn't face going out so I went for a little wander in the 30degree heat and chanced upon Cosmen and Keiless panderia and pastelria with these little fellows sitting in the window looking at me.

The lady in the bakery was lovely and didn't mock my attempts at Spanish (a language I must make an attempt to learn!) and kindly packaged up the cake and some home made croissants for me to take away.

Again for me the cake was too sweet, as were the croissants which were covered in a melted sugar syrup, but, again Manny loved them and polished the lot off! Although sweet, the cake was very fresh and very tasty so I would recommend if you're nearby to pop in. According to their website they have other cupcakes, but on the day I visited only this one was available. They also have the Madrid speciality torrijas which are kind of like a French Toast. I didn't try one but they did look nice!

Apart from cupcakes we also had

A wonderful dulce de leche cheesecake from Starbucks. I know, I know, Starbucks in Madrid, but Manny was asleep and I needed coffee after a night drinking bourbon and I figured if I couldn't order in Spanish I could order in Starbucks language. It worked, and the cheesecake was really nice - much nicer than any cake in UK Starbucks!

Manny had some chocolate cake and I had a dulce de leche cake at a lovely little cafe, La Cocina de mi Vecina, again, near the hotel after hours of walking round the zoo on the Friday - we also had some carrot juice and pear and ginger juice freshly squeezed so the cake was basically cancelled out. The carrot and orange juice was surprisingly tasty btw!

Finally Manny had some chocolate cake at Starbucks as well (again there was a good reason - we needed a clean loo - don't ask). I had none as was too ill to eat, but Manny said it was very moist and very chocolaty.

Ladurée cupcakes sont délicieux, mais cher

2011-04-04T23:06:00.000+01:00

Today was my first proper day of being unemployed. Or self employed if you look at it that way - I've just not done much about the self employed bit yet. Friday didn't really count as I spent most of it in bed hungover after leaving drinks. Incase anyone's wondering I didn't tell those I disliked how I felt about them - best to move on with some dignity - although not sure how much of that I retained as we left the building (sober) singing So long, farewell, Auf wiedersehen, adieu to everyone.

So, to celebrate me leaving work we decided to spend a lovely day in London - including trying some very special cupcakes I'd read about some time ago, and could now, without a trip to Paris, try.

Cupcakes from my favourite Parisian Tea room - Ladurée!!

We had hoped to eat in the tea room in Harrods, but it was very busy (mainly with groups of tourists only having drinks...and a very rude French group who pushed and shoved and touched the food they wanted while barking at the staff - I mentioned excuse moi to the pokey 'lady', but wish I'd said excusez-moi merde tête instead. I do love to swear at people in their own tongue), so we opted for takeaway.

There were only two cupcakes on offer - the rose and the chocolate orange, although their menu outside showed their cupcakes as being the rose and a pistachio griotte. I got the last rose one so was incredibly chuffed - until I saw the price!!

We paid for our cakes and took them home very carefully on the bus. I was scared to open the box when we finally arrived, incase they had turned to mush (we'd had a little incident in Sainsburys where I'd boshed them slightly) but as you can see they survived!! Phew!

They are totally gorgeous aren't they? I'm going to allow them to call it a cupcake, although I've always gone with there being some kind of whipped buttercream'y frosting on top of a cupcake and fondant being fairy cake (this is how I differentiate - I'm not getting into a cupcake v fairy cake debate again).

We were worried that they wouldn't be tasty after spending all that money, but thank goodness they were delicious. You could tell as soon as you picked it up that it was incredibly fresh as they smelt divine. My rose cake was moist and filled with a delicious fruit compote, then a layer of fresh whipped cream, fondant, and more piped cream - all of it was melt in your mouth fresh and lovely.

Manny's chocolate orange was incredibly moist and fresh also - with lovely bits of peel and chocolate inside.

So, was London's most expensive cupcake worth it? I'd say yes but only as a one off/treat - I'm never going to buy a box of four from there on a whim - they are just too expensive.

When in Ladurée I think I'm always going to choose a few macaroon instead - that's right a few, I can get about 4 or 5 minis for the price of a cupcake.

Yes, they really were £6 each (£7.20 if you have them in the tea room!!).

Is this London's most expensive cupcake?

De-constructed oozing Tiramisu

2011-03-25T22:31:00.000Z

Ciao lettori bella, this months Forever Nigella theme was Italian, Ciao Italia, and had to either be an Italian recipe or a recipe which showcased an Italian ingredient.

I had my thinking hat on for some time, until this weekends deadline was looming and I'd still baked nothing. Then inspiration struck, I decided to make a version of Nigella's Irish Cream Tiramisu from Nigella Express but instead of using the Savoiardi as the base for the dreamy gooey marscapone (Italian!!) mixture I baked some of Nigella's cupcakes, from How to be a Domestic Goddess using my new filled cupcake tray, a birthday gift from my gorgeous friend Rene in Chicago.

The cupcakes were a doddle to make and filled 11 of the wholes in my tray. I wasn't complaining though as (a) it meant I could like the bowl clean (and it was delicious batter- just the kind I like, nice consistency and nice and sweet but not too much - you can tell how good a cake is going to be from the batter!) and (b) It meant I had a spare if need be, or I could just eat it as a tester!

When they came out of the oven it was a bit of a faff to get them out of the moulds, even though it says they're non stick and will come out with no hassle (I slightly greased the tins as well just incase). Most came out ok, although some of the swirly edges weren't keen to release.

Instead of Irish Cream I used a hefty glug of Marsala (Italian!!) mixed with some fabulously strong Monmouth coffee I bought earlier in the day. The girl in Monmouth was lovely, helping me choose the right blend for this - you don't get that service in Starbucks, or many other "fancy" cafes for that matter. I dunked the cake tops and bottoms in the mixture, maybe a little too much as they got quite moist, and then left them to dry a bit.

The tiramisu topping was made with marscapone, egg yolks, sugar and a whisked egg white. Oh, and lashings more Marsala. This is where I think I went a little wrong as I added some extra booze as I like my tiramisu to have a good kick so my topping didn't set quite enough I think, or this could be because we didn't set it in the traditional way.

As you can see it's a little runny but it tasted really nice so we slapped it into the cavity on the bottom cupcake, then placed the top of the cupcake which had some more of the filling inside. Be warned these cupcakes aren't very pretty but they do taste amazing!

Ooooh look it's a bit of a gooey mess....and it's about to get worse....

We poured a little more of the filling over the top to soak the Marsala soaked cupcake some more, and covered with a dusting of cocoa. As Nigella might say the topping ooozed seductively down the cupcake topper.

It doesn't look the prettiest cupcake but boy was it good - very rich and very boozy but very very good.

I can see Nigella pouting seductively at the camera eating this, she does love food that oooozes after all!

A rum do - the daiquiri cupcakes that taste of nothing

2011-03-24T22:33:00.000Z

Last week while doing my usual trawl of the internet for cupcake goodies I discovered these beautiful cupcake cases from Hus and Hem and I just had to get them. As well as the gorgeous Snorkmaiden ones, I got green Moomin ones and some huge oriental cases - they are massive!!

I also got, just seen in the top picture, Cake Days, the second book by Tarek Malouf of the Hummingbird Bakery and spent some time deciding what to bake with from it that was suitable for my moomin cases.

Then I remembered that Moominpappa makes punch that includes strawberry liquer and decided to make some strawberry daiquiri cupcakes. In the book these are actually mini cupcakes, but they have different timings at the back in the extensive notes so I thought it'd be simple enough.

We bought some rum and some strawberries and got baking. Well first we had to make some sugar syrup - with a load of rum in it, in which you basically boiled off all the alcohol from the rum making it a rather expensive sugar syrup. Hurumpf. Deciding I wanted a proper cocktail cupcake, I bunged in some more rum after the sugar syrup cooled - who wants a virgin cupcake? Once my strawberries were soaking in the boozy syrup I got to work on the cupcake.

The recipe called for very little butter, lots of sugar, and only one egg. When I started making it I really had some doubts about whether they'd work - the mix just looked and felt wrong. It's all pretty normal, you mix, you put into the cupcake cases with the boozy strawberries (drained from the syrup) and put them in the oven. The book says you will get 24 - 30 mini cupcakes which I assume to be half size(ish) - I got 8 or so quite measly sized normal cupcakes.

I baked them till they were golden brown and springy to the touch - however there was a bit of a wrong feel about them. You know when you can just tell? Anyways, I carried on. I put the reserved alcoholic sugar syrup on the cakes, not realising that later in the recipe it tells you you should've reserved some. Double hurumpf.

Apart from feeling wrong, they looked prettyish in their case and domed really well, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and cracked on with the frosting. Of course I didn't have the reserved sugar syrup so I substituted it with a hefty glug of rum. The frosting worked quite well and had a nice fresh taste from the lime zest, however it didn't pipe very well as my beloved 1M nozzle got squished and kinda squirty out a bit funny. They did scrub up quite well though.

Alas they look much prettier than they tasted. I can only say they tasted overly sweet with a really unpleasant after-taste. The cake was sticky (could've been the sugar syrup cuz I used too much?) and also that cheap muffin like texture you get from bad cupcakes. Really not to my taste - I actually couldn't swallow more than one bite. Manny being the guzzly guts that he is decided to persevere and ate one, saying it was ok, but then he decided on the second one they really weren't and gave up.

I will try some other recipes from the book as they look really good - there are some lovely looking whoopies in there, but I may use the cupcakes for ideas only as these were incredibly disappointing.

Recent cupcake round up

2011-03-20T19:01:00.000Z

I've put off doing this post as I find it incredibly depressing to write about awful cupcakes but alas these lot have been inedible and I feel it's only fair you share my pain - if not the cost of all these cakes we don't eat!! I really don't know what is going on with the cupcake world, but it would seem that lots of people out there are selling some truly awful, and in some cases inedible cupcakes. Who keeps buying these cakes?

First up from our trip to the Ideal Home Show on Wednesday is Katy's Cupcakes

The cakes looked really pretty, with some nice decorative touches. We opted to buy two (Manny wanted a box of four for a fiver - thank god we didn't!)

We opted for a Jack Daniels and a Baileys Chocolate. The Baileys one was edible but the cake part was dry and there wasn't much flavour of baileys. The Jack Daniels one however had a very unpleasant taste. The frosting and cake were drier than a popcorn fart. The 'chocolate' swirl on top I gave to Manny and the look of disgust that he had when he tried it is something that I wont' forget - he said it had a completely unpleasant after-taste and wasn't like chocolate at all.

All in all, not recommended.

Next up is another Ideal Homes purchase from Babycakes. We didn't really get off to a good start with Babycakes - I asked could I take some pics of her stall and she snipply replied "I should charge for it as everyone wants a picture of my cakes". She could stop people asking for photos by offering samples of her cakes - that'd put anyone off.

I bought a Cherry Bakewell and a chocolate for Manny. The cherry bakewell looked pretty but tasted of nothing at all. The frosting and sponge were rock hard. The bit of frosting I broke off tasted of nothing but off butter. Manny's chocolate was the same - inedible.

Some of the remains of the cake.

Next up is an old favourite, which in recent times has not been good, Primrose Bakery.

Manny had a chocolate which didn't taste all that chocolatey but was fresh enough to eat. My peanut butter one had a really dry base and an unpleasant after-taste and, you guessed it, ended up in the bin.

We also got an Afghan Biscuit from there as I really liked it last time I had one (about 2 years ago) but this was hard and pretty impossible to eat.

I'm not sure what's happened to the quality in Primrose but I've made their peanut butter cupcakes at home and they were lush. Maybe they should give me a job?

Last month we finally got round to checking out The Cupcake Company in Kensington. I should've gone to Hummingbird as at least the cakes would've been good.

Firstly sorry about the photos, the cakes got a little squished, and also my frosting actually came off whole in the box so I had to replace it. I knew from this that the frosting or cake wasn't going to be fresh. Oh and my poor elephant was decapitated on the journey!

I had a vanilla which tasted of absolutely nothing. Is it really that difficult to make a good vanilla cupcake? I keep getting vanilla cupcakes that have not a hint of vanilla in them. Why is it so difficult? A baker I wrote about on here said her customers like them to be not to vanilla'y, but surely a hint of it would be good? The frosting tasted of nothing but whipped butter.

Manny's chocolate cupcake wasn't incredibly flavoursome either. However, the malted cookie we bought was delicious, and I'd actually go back for their cookies.

Keep going, we're nearly there.

The last two are cupcakes from Bea's of Bloomsbury's new outlet at One New Change. I've enjoyed some cupcakes by Bea before and we decided to pop to the new place at the end of December, during the snowy times to grab a couple of festive cupcakes and enjoy a Baileys Hot chocolate. The new cafe is gorgeous and so were the cupcakes - to look at.

We opted for a baileys chocolate cupcake and a gingerbread one. To this day I'm still not sure the right person ate the right cake as the flavours were so subtle they weren't noticeable. The cakes themselves were fresh but just tasted of absolutely nothing, as did the frosting, which was rather disappointing.

Finally, lets end on something a little more positive. At the Ideal Home Show on Wednesday Mich Turner from Little Venice Cake Company was doing a session in the theatre so of course we went along to watch. She was making this divine looking Helter Skelter Chocolate Cake and showing you how to decorate it with chocolate and chocolate roses.

Isn't it stunning? I had to stop Manny running at the stage and trying to dive in for a bite!

While Mich was presenting her piece she suddenly stopped and said "oh hello" while starting directly at me. She then proceeded to mention my blog a couple of times and say how I'd written a wonderful piece about the decorating class of hers I went to. My blog got a further mention when she started making the roses and she said I'd made them in December! I was so chuffed, and a little embarrassed at everyone starting at me but I was so touched that she actually remembered my blog name!

Cakes for Japan

2011-03-17T19:29:00.000Z

Cakes for Japan, a fantastic event organised by the gorgeous Miss Cakehead, is happening tomorrow at Maiden, 188 Shoreditch High Street tomorrow from 11am to 7pm where loads of fabulous bakers have provided some fabulous looking cakes in all shapes and forms, including cakes pops from Molly Bakes.

Sushi cake pops from Molly Bakes (photography credit Heather Clifford)

The menu has a vast array of fantastic sounding baked goods, including cupcakes from Kooky Bakes and Ms Cupcake, cake pops from the lovely Flour Von Sponge and pac man gingerbread from London Baking, to name but a few of the many cakes pledged, so please do pop along to the pop up and buy some cake for a great cause.

Look how gorgeous these painted cherry blossom cookies from Nevie Pie are - absolutely stunning!

I'd love to have done something but alas it clashes with bake sales at both mine and Manny's work for Comic Relief which I'd already promised to bake for. I'm going to try and pop over at lunchtime though to buy something lovely - please make sure you do to if you can!

Brownie pops with a twist

2011-03-13T20:03:00.000Z

On Thursday a lovely package of goodies arrived at work from Frank PR as part of their campaign for Hellman's Mayonnaise. I had been due to go along to a tasting on Tuesday night but as it was my first day back at work for a week I was there till nearly 7 so couldn't make it so this was sent so I could try out their recipe for posh brownies.

Now I do like a brownie, and I'm quite partial to a bit of mayo on a sandwich, but together? Sacre bleu. Or blurgh I was thinking.

How wrong I was. The recipe was a doddle to follow and I only changed a couple of things. I used my own vanilla extract as I just don't use essence ever, and I omitted the walnuts as I had plans for these little brownies!

The brownie was incredibly moist, rich and very chocolaty. No hint of mayo at all. When I mixed the mayo into the mixture pre-baking it just looked and smelt wrong so I was glad it baked away. I can 100% say that these brownies were a revelation to me and are now probably my go to brownie recipe. Also I'm chuffed to have been introduced to Waitrose chocolate for baking. I must admit to being a bit of a baking snob and only usually using Green & Blacks but that can get very expensive, although I do tend to buy it when it's on offer!

So rather than just stick to scoffing some incredibly delicious, but lets face it rather boring looking brownies, I decided to get all Westwood on them and pimp them slightly. But without the fake ghetto accent.

Not particularly original but I decided to pop my brownies! I basically mooshed up the brownie mixture and rolled it with a teeny bit of melted chocolate (I did buy some *gasp* Betty Crocker frosting to mix into it but I just couldn't do it!) and then dunked them in some melted chocolate.

There were a few pop casualties on the way but the ones that survived were pretty and tasted rather lovely. The ones that didn't make it were quickly thrown into the leftover melted chocolate and given to Manny for lunch as a chocolate fondue type of thing - just as well he's off to the gym tomorrow night!

You can find the recipe for Hellman's Mayonnaise brownies here, and a video (with the crying one off "celeb" Masterchef so I've not watched it - it may have put me off making the brownies) showing you how to make them here.

Un petite post

2011-03-10T19:41:00.001Z

Starbucks have launched a range of Petite Treats and although we aren't lucky enough to get the Petite cupcakes they have in the States (including the divine looking mini peanut butter cupcake) I thought I'd do a little post about them.

The range includes three cake pops; sparkle, rocky road and almond and two whoopies; chocolate and red velvet. The almond cake pop seems to have replaced the American Tiramisu cake pop, which I prefer the sound of!

As a Starbucks card holder I was lucky enough to get a voucher for a freebie mini today so I popped into the one on Bankside and couldn't resist picking up two petites (they are mini after all!).

First up was the red velvet whoopie. I must say, and I may lose readers here, this was as good, if not better than a couple of store bought whoopies I've had. It looks a bit shiny in the pic, mainly due to our office being lit up like Blackpool at the time of the Illuminations, but it wasn't. It was a perfectly edible flavoursome whoopie. The cake/cookie part was perfectly fresh and the filling was tasty, if a little bland (could've done with more vanilla).

My second choice was...can you guess?....the sparkle cake pop. Hello, sparkles! (Manny can insert some smart ass "oooh I sparkle" joke about Edward Cullen here but that's only because he's a bitter old fart who doesn't get Twilight).

Firstly, let me apologise for the photos. I took the cake pop home and alas some of its sparkle stayed in the bag when I took it out. Also my kitchen is the opposite of my office and is lit like a Chilean coal mine. Only darker.

So the pop. I've said before I'm not that fussed about cake pops - often they have too much frosting to cake ratio, but this one really didn't. The chocolate outside was really tasty and the middle was moist but not overly so (Kelly seemed to get a wet cake pop, which just doesn't sound nice so maybe I got lucky!). Either way it was really delicious - one of the better cake pops I've tried. I hear gasps from the cake purists out there but as you know I'm nothing if honest and I really enjoyed this cake pop and would eat it again!

I'm not sure if Starbucks will be offering the free petite on a Thursday again but they often do offers for card holders so it's worth getting one!

23rd March - quick update: we popped to the Kings Road Starbucks the other day and bought a couple of coffees and cake pops - both were stored in the fridge so when we tried to eat them they were hard and incredibly cold. They'd probably have been fine if brought to room temperature but as we wanted them with our coffee it was rather disappointing. Manny reports that it was really nice but a bit firm.

Drowning my sorrows in cupcakes

2011-03-09T23:15:00.000Z

Last weekend saw me descend into my last year of my 30's. Not only was I old(er) but to make matters worse my birthday was on a Sunday I couldn't get to my favourite cupcake emporium for some birthday goodies as I was in the wilds of the Highlands of Scotland visiting my mum as a surprise for her 60th so no Kooky for me!

We spent 5 days in Scotland and it wasn't until the 4th day that we discovered some cupcakes. We did find some other lovely cakes but no cupcakes. FYI Mohammed Al Fayed's cafe at Shin Falls does a wonderful meringue!

My first birthday cupcake was from the local bakers in Dingwall, Deas. They have two outlets on Dingwall High Street, including a cafe where you can sit with a cup of tea and the pie or cake of your choice. Manny went for a haggis, neeps and tatties pie (shudder) and we got the cupcakes to take away. The lovely girl serving gave us a free cupcake after deciding the pink one was too girlie for Manny. He has this effect on girls -they often give him free cake!

My cupcake was a vanilla sponge with some raspberry frosting. I didn't hold out much hope for it as it looked kinda blah (the holes on top worried me) if I'm honest but it was actually quite nice! It was moist and the frosting was really tasty - which is more than can be said for cupcakes from many of Time Outs recent list of the best cupcakes in London (more on that in another post!).

Manny's was plain vanilla and he seemed to enjoy it. Again it ended up in his belly rather than the bin so result. You can see the holes on the top of the cake in this pic - I think its from either over mixing of the oven being too hot? The cake underneath was moist though and the frosting wasn't just a lump of sugar or flavourless butter so all was good.

Our second cupcake in Scotland was from a small cafe inside Inverness Airport. This one looked a little prettier than Deas' offering but alas it was all style and no substance. My raspberry and white chocolate was overly sweet and didn't really taste of anything much. The middle raspberry jam made it slightly better but unfortunately I couldn't eat most of it.

Manny's mocha chocolate fared better and he said it was incredibly chocolaty. He scoffed the lot so it must've been ok.

The highlight of Inverness Airport for me wasn't the cupcake but spotting Danny Dyer there. I would've gone and said hello as I have a bit of a crush on him but he looked so hungover I couldn't bring myself to bother him!

Back in London we decided to have a little day after my birthday celebration with lunch and a cupcake. I choose Moolis as my lunch venue (yum) and we headed to Hummingbird to try one of their new daily specials. Monday's special is chocolate fondant; a rich chocolate sponge, with a decadent chocolate fondant centre, iced with a rich chocolate cream.

I don't know what to say really. This cake was nice but nothing that special. It was chocolaty but didn't really taste of chocolate. There was a depth of flavour that was missing - when I compare it to the Gü cupcake from Lola's it just wasn't in the same league. I found it a little dry and the fondant centre in mine appeared to have been forgotten. The frosting was ok but again not chocolaty enough somehow, yet, a little too rich for me. I'm not sure if its due to the chocolate they used or what - I'll be trying the recipe from the book Cake Days when it's out to see if it fares better when I bake it using Green and Blacks - my trusty baking chocolate of choice! Manny of course scoffed it and some of mine, although he agreed the Gü cupcake was better!

I will be popping back to try Tuesday's flavour - S'moreAnne cupcake - how could I resist it! And perhaps on a Sunday for their Boston Cream Pie one, a cupcake I've been meaning to make forever!

The best thing about our visit was the cheesecake brownie we shared - we couldn't say no to it. And it's not every day you turn nearly 40!

Un Petit Pois

2011-02-24T19:36:00.001Z

Photo: Beatriz da Costa for Petit Pois

So, the new cupcake isn't whoopie pies, macarons or bundt cakes, but cupcakes themselves!

cupcakes with secret ingredients. Part of a new range made by the Paris-based baking business, Petis Pois, these cupcakes have no glitter, no butter, no great mound of sickly icing, last for five days and measure in at a mere 175 calories each.

These gluten free cupcakes, from Petit Pois, are low in calories and are packed full of 54% vegetables and include flavours such as vanilla and courgette, orange and pumpkin, lemon and courgette and chocolate and beetroot.

Although I find these intriguing, I do find the whole article a bit odd - it seems to lay claim to these cakes being a wonderful new thing that the "zany" bakers have invented, yet I've had courgette cupcakes before and have baked pumpkin and beetroot cupcakes myself.

According to Petit Pois' Facebook

The iconic green pea on top of each cupcake signals that this is a cake that is actually good for you. Our cakes are delicious, stylish, healthy, honest, and let’s just say it: full of vegetables.

Petis Pois cupcakes launch at Selfridges on 15th March, and although I question some of the press I do want to try them so shall be popping along soon after the launch. I wonder if they'll have pea cupcakes? That was going to be my secret ingredient for Cupcake Camp Bournemouth if I could've make it - I adore peas!

Finally, I don't mean to be pedantic but I class a cupcake as having some kind of frosting and I'd class these as being fairy cakes, but lets not open that can of worms again! And I'm not even commenting on the fact that the Evening Standard seem to think that no glitter and no butter is a good thing when it comes to cake...pah.

Are you the Cake Decorator of the Year?

2011-02-21T22:45:00.000Z

I have two free tickets for the Ideal Home Show to give away in conjunction with their Ideal Cake Decorator of the Year competition. Tickets can be used on any weekday for the event but please make sure you can get to London for the event before entering – this giveaway is for the tickets only, you’ll have to make your own travel arrangements! The Ideal Home Show runs from the 11 – 27th March at Earl’s Court. I have always meant to go but never get round to it – maybe this year I shall make it!

The Ideal Home Cake Decorator of the Year is the Ideal Home Show’s way of celebrating the recent rise in the love of home baking and cake decorating. They are launching a nationwide search for the best of the UK’s aspiring cake decorators, with an appetite for the amazing art of sugarcraft. The competition aims to celebrate the most talked about event of the year – the Royal Wedding, and entrants will be tasked with creating a royal themed wedding cake, decorated for the royal couple’s happy day, to mark this special occasion.

Entrants to the competition are asked to bring down their Royal themed cake art, to the show on Wednesday 16th March to be displayed in the Ideal Food section of the show, to be in with the chance to win a wide range of prizes which include Champagne afternoon tea for two at the luxurious regency-style hotel, The Kensington, London. Other fantastic prizes include 12 month’s free subscription to Cake Craft and Decoration Magazine along with the winning cake featured in the magazine.

“We want cake decorating enthusiasts from across the UK to create the most fabulous and spectacular cake that is worthy of a Royal wedding and embodies all that is great and British.”

All the details can be found on the official website.

Alas although my cake decorating has improved dramatically over the years, I still don’t’ think I’m quite what they’re looking for – however I may pop along on the day and see the entries!

To be in with a chance of winning two tickets to the exhibition please leave a comment below with your contact details (blog, twitter or email) and the flavour of cake you’d celebrate the Royal Wedding with. Competition closes 28th February. If you mention this on Twitter, with my name @annecupcake and a link to this blog you have a second chance to enter! Giveaway is open only to those in the UK.

Good luck and please send me pics of your cakes if you take part!

A cupcake 'Pick me Up'

2011-02-13T19:56:00.000Z

I've known for a few days that we were picking up Cupcake yesterday and I thought long and hard about what to make for her debut. I thought I'd decided on the Heart Cupcakes I'd seen on Bake it in A Cake, but then, as women are prone to do, I changed my mind. Ingredients had to be sourced and bought but it was all worth it, as I was keen to make some cakes I'd never made before.

The tiramisu cupcake includes four of my favourite things in the world; cake, coffee, booze and a bit of chocolate. How could it fail to be perfect?

I used the recipe from the Love Bakery cookbook (I know them again - but I love this book) and of course I used Cupcake to mix it all. I thought I may have over mixed as the cakes felt a little firm, but then when I poured over the syrup of Monmouth filter coffee, sugar and lashings of Marsala they soon softened up.

The cupcakes are frosted with a marscapone frosting - which is marscapone cheese, a very small amount of icing sugar and whipped double cream mixed together. I had to get out my trusty old Dualit mixer to whip the cream while Cupcake mixed the icing sugar and marscapone - I hope she wasn't too put out.

The frosting was then piped onto the booze and coffee soaked cupcakes, topped with a cloud of Green and Blacks cocoa powder and some shavings of Green and Blacks 85% chocolate. Divine.

So how did they taste you ask? Absolutely delicious. I couldn't have chosen better for Cupcake's first foray into baking. The only thing I'd do differently is soak the cakes more - I didn't use all the mixture as I thought it may drown the cakes too much, but I think it would have been fine. They cakes had a lovely boozy hit and the coffee was nice but not too overpowering - I used very strong coffee so thought it might be too much. The frosting is another to add to my list of favourite things - very light and airy - like eating a tasty cloud covered cupcake. We ate ours with a little splosh of Marsala over the top for an extra boozy kick!

Cupcake did us proud! She mixed everything beautifully and her little guard thing stopped the usual dust of icing sugar all over my kitchen. I think she can stay ;)

By the way there are a lot of different stories behind the origin of Tiramisu but my favourite is the account of the recipe's invention at an Italian brothel to provide an energy boost to exhausted clients - maybe I should be approaching the 666 Sauna down the road to see if they'd like to buy some boxes for their clientèle!

Happy Birthday dear I Heart Cupcakes...

2011-02-12T22:13:00.002Z

So today is I Heart Cupcake's birthday. Three years ago today I started this blog, my first post being about some about some cupcakes Manny had bought me for Valentines from Lola's.

So if this was my blogs wedding anniversary traditional 3rd wedding anniversary gifts have a theme of leather, or if you're going contemporary, crystal. Someone once bought me a crystal decanter - why I'm not sure - can you decant Baileys or Jagermeister I asked. And meh to leather. Instead I went for this....

Meet Cupcake - my brand new shiny baby pink KitchenAid!!!!!!!!!! Yep that's right after years of touching them in John Lewis to the point of nearly being asked to leave I finally have one to call my very own.

I can't really put into words how excited I am about my new baby but I can't stop touching her and smiling! I was like a kid let loose in the candy store today when we went to Chiswick to buy her. Everyone in the shop was super excited too when they saw her - she brings love to wherever she goes! As you can maybe tell, I am chuffed to bits. My grandparents bought me Cupcake as a late Christmas present, which makes it even more special as my grandmother is one of the main reasons I love baking so much. She taught me to make fairy cakes, butterfly cakes, millionaires shortbread and my favourite rude Scotch pancakes (they used to make me giggle) on her griddle which to this day I still call her girdle. I have yet to try a millionaires shortbread that beats my grans. Her great kitchen abilities have passed through our family, my lovely Auntie Kate, RIP, was a fantastic baker and we used to often spend holidays in the kitchen rustling up empire biscuits, tiffin and my favourite of hers - strawberry cream tarts! My mother is also an amazing baker, and cook. She works in a bakery in Scotland, but the stuff they sell doesn't even compare to my her home baked goods - her cakes were legendary with my friends when I was at school and even after I moved to London my best friend Julie used to pop in on the way home to collect some cakes from my mums goodie tin!

Cupcake will be christened tomorrow - I already have some fancy pants ingredients to make some fabulous cupcakes for her debut so look out for the blog post about them!

As it's my blog's birthday and I'm feeling so incredibly happy I have decided to do a bit of a giveaway. I have received a couple of silicone giant cupcake molds and if you leave a comment below before Friday 18th Feb you will be entered into a prize draw to win one. If you don't have a blog and you comment please leave a contact email so I can get in touch if you win.

The giveaway is available to UK readers only I'm afraid, but I promise to do a worldwide giveaway soon!

Thanks to everyone who continues to read and comment on my blog after all this time - and to email me as well! I've met some lovely people through my writing I Heart Cupcakes and have had some wonderful cupcakes in the three years -and my baking, and especially my piping, has come on leaps and bounds!

Now I'm off to look at my KitchenAid some more! And maybe stroke it!

Giveaway now closed - Winner chosen on Random.org was Abbie - congratulations!

Cake makes me stout

2011-02-08T19:37:00.000Z

The theme for the second Forever Nigella, hosted by Sarah of Maison Cupcake is Seduced by Chocolate, and as Nigella is all about the sinful pleasures in life, (well sometimes, lets not forget the irritatingly named Temple Food chapters), there are a lot of chocolate recipes to choose from. I in fact ended up making two, but only one is really the focus of this blog.

I made Nigella’s flourless chocolate cake from Kitchen for Manny’s work as a last minute “good luck moving offices” cake last Thursday night. It was a very simple cake to make and the sliver I tasted before it was whisked off to LR HQ never to be seen again tasted delicious. Something to make again I’d say. And make properly next time - this was meant to come with a margarita cream however someone, who shall remain nameless, appears to have drunk the miniature of tequilla I keep for baking so it was delivered without cream - which didn't seem to matter as it was scoffed sharpish and feedback from Manny's colleagues was very favourable. And none came home which is always a good sign.

I then couldn't decide what to make for my proper Forever Nigella entry. The peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake looked so good, as did the chocolate and honey cake, with little tiny bees on top. And then there were the churros. Hmmm churros. However one recipe caught my eye – the Guinness and chocolate cake. I like booze and I like chocolate = sold!

From her book Feast, for her Guinness and chocolate cake, Nigella (obviously from the title) uses the black stuff from Ireland. I chose to go a little more local, opting for some Kernel Brewery Export Stout (1890 London) an award winning stout from my local brewery in Bermondsey. It was incredibly tempting just to drink all this and make a different cake - I'm not a fan of ale really, but I do love a good stout.

I seem to choose well with the Nigella recipes I make - this cake was even simpler than the flourless chocolate one! And the simplicity doesn't mean the cake wasn't tasty - the results were fantastic!

Obviously I couldn't resist it and had to cupcake a couple of spoonfuls of the cake, but who can blame me, aren't they pretty?!

So as well as cupcake'ing the recipe I made the proper cake. And boy it was a beauty - an astounding colour, black as night with a moistness that only lashings of butterbeer can provide!

And once I covered it in splodges of ooooozing vanilla creamy creamy cheese frosting it was a thing of beauty. I know it's not shop pretty but I love it!

And it tasted as good as it looked – very moist cake and incredibly flavoursome with some of the notes of the stout (rich dried fruit, rum and raisin, espresso, chocolate etc) coming through. I’ve made Guinness cake before and although this stout was slightly more expensive I’d definitely recommend spending a little extra as it is worth it and gives it a lovely intense flavour. I also added a good splash of vanilla paste to the frosting as I can't resist adding vanilla to anything, and it really brought out the flavour of the cake for me. The frosting was fabulous - even pudding cat Angel gave it the paws up for taste. Lets face it there is little you add cream to that doesn't taste better after!

I've included the recipe below -with some changes I made but if you want Nigella's original version you can find it on her website, link above.

Cake ingredients
250ml Kernel brewery porter
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa
400g caster sugar
1 x 142ml pot sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Frosting ingredients
300g Philadelphia cream cheese
150g icing sugar
125ml double or whipping cream
(optional) Good splodge of vanilla paste (I used quite a bit - I love vanilla!)

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin. I would pre-heat the oven a bit before starting - this cake took me less than 10mins to make so the oven wasn't quite heated and I had to wait!

Pour the Kernel Stout (or whatever Stout you're using) into a large saucepan, add the butter, sliced - and heat until the butter's melted. At this point, take off the heat and whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Nigella does the rest of the cake in the pan, but I poured the butterbeer mix into my large bowl here as it was easier to beat everything together in the bowl.

Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.

Pour the cake batter into the lined tin and bake for 45 minutes. Mine took 45mins but Nigella states it could take up to an hour.

Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.

When the cake's cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing. Be careful transferring the cake – it’s quite squishy!

Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together.

Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency. This is where I added a good splodge of vanilla paste. Slap the frosting on the cake and lick the bowl clean if you have any left.

If you’re a bit of a girl, sprinkle with glitter and assorted fancy heart shaped goodies.

Serves: yields about 12 slices (or less if you have a husband who doesn’t understand the concept of a small slice).

Can't wait to see what next month's Forever Nigella challenge brings - thanks again to Sarah for hosting this fabulous event!

Btw, not all of the cake was covered in sprinkles - just for the blog - those things are killer on your teeth!

Curly Wurly cupcakes sind sehr gut

2011-02-06T19:28:00.000Z

Last year my work relocated near to Borough Market and I often pop into Konditor and Cook for my lunch, and try desperately to avoid buying either Curly Wurly cake or their Curly Wurly brownies. On Friday a new incarnation of my K&C favourite was on display to tempt me - the Curly Wurly cupcake!!

Resistance was futile, especially when (a) they had adorable little chocolate bears on, (b) Curly Wurly is my all time favourite Konditor and Cook cake and (c) they were on offer, two for a fiver. Oh, and lets not forget (d) I'm a fatty that cannot resist cupcakes.

We didn't get round to eating them on Friday as we were full after dinner, so had them on Saturday. They were still very moist which again makes me wonder when I buy a dry cupcake from (unfortunately) many cupcakeries in London when the heck did they make them! The vanilla cream cheese frosting is quite sweet on the curly wurly cake but I find it goes really well with the dark chocolate sponge - but be warned if you're not a fan of sweet things.

This is the first time I've seen these in store, and I visit often, so I'm not sure if they're going to start stocking them all the time, but I will check and feedback on here, incase anyone wants to try them. You can always bake your own at home if you want to - I know I shall be!

Oh and finally, I told Manny to choose one of the cupcakes while I jumped in the shower pre-gig going and he chose the teddy bear one!!! How mean!

Nuts for nutella!

2011-02-05T00:44:00.001Z

Today, February 5th is World Nutella Day so happy world nutella day, or if you're from Russia Schastlivogo Dnya Nutelly!

My friend Kirsty is a bit of a nutella addict and as I was meeting her earlier this week I decided to celebrate a little early by baking her some cupcakes.

The base is a chocolate chip cupcake, basic vanilla cupcake recipe with 50g of chocolate chips mixed in. Once they were baked and cooled I used an apple corer to make a little hole and spooned a large dollop of nutella into the cavity. Then it was time for the frosting. I used to Hummingbird recipe for nutella frosting, except I added a bit more nutella, and a bit more milk to make sure it was of piping consistency.

Alas the frosting piped a little too well, quite a lot of the leftover frosting was piped straight into my mouth, and in turn straight onto my already ample thighs! Bad Anne!

My recipe only made 7 cupcakes (I'd aimed for 6), and 4 were destined for Kirsty but I was able to taste test one before Manny scoffed the other two as an after-gym snack, and it was delicious. I really liked the choc chip base with lashings of oooooozing nutella. The frosting really was an absolute knock-out. I kind of went off nutella years ago after scoffing loads of it in the nutella cafe in Frankfurt but this has reignited my love of it! My poor thighs!

I really recommend making these if you're a fan of nutella! Next time I'll try my original idea - a peanut butter base, filled with nutella and topped with nutella frosting (Kirsty doesn't like peanut butter which is why I made choc chip instead!). By the way she loved the cupcakes as well!

Have a wonderful nutella day, whether it's baking with it or sitting in front of the tv with a jar and a spoon!

Finally make sure you check out the nutella day website - it's full of links to blogs, recipes and facts about the worlds favourite spread!

And check out the ladies who brought the world nutella day - Sara from Ms. Adventures in Italy and Michelle from Bleeding Espresso.

A tale of two cupcakes

2011-02-01T19:29:00.001Z

Even after nearly 3 years of writing this blog I still get excited when I hear of a new cupcakery opening in London. Alas, these days I’m often left disappointed and more than a little sad. Not to mention out of pocket.

I read about Sweet Couture a couple of weeks ago, I think via Daily Candy, and had planned to go two weekends ago. We didn’t make it until yesterday, so the anticipation had been growing. The shop itself is small but perfectly formed. Their display reminded me of Lola’s and their flavours included all the favourites, double chocolate, vanilla, red velvet and peanut butter. As usual on our first visit somewhere we kept it simple – a vanilla for me and a double chocolate for Manny. Obviously I opted for pink frosting!

The cakes got a little, well a lot shook up on the way home (I blame the extra hot salsa on my burrito from the fantastic Benito’s Hat – that stuff is HOT!) but they didn’t get too squished – this to me wasn’t a good sign. If the frosting is so hard it doesn’t squish after being turned upside down several times by a man who shall remain nameless..Manny…hmmmm

So, the taste test. The cake part was a bit stale but not as bad as some I’ve had. Not a hint of vanilla in the cake at all though. Same with the frosting, no vanilla at all, unfortunately it tasted of nothing but butter. It was incredibly cloying and unpleasant – like eating a chunk of cold butter would be. All in all it was inedible so another cupcake ends up in my bin. Manny’s chocolate cupcake fared slightly better, ending up in his belly. I tasted a little bit and the cake itself was quite dry however and didn’t taste of much, and the frosting was ok but again had a very heavy buttery flavour. As Manny put it he didn’t have that lovely “just eaten some chocolaty goodness” feeling after eating it. I fully agree.

It’s such a shame, and we may have got it on a bad day – I may pop back and try another as the lady working there (the baker?) was really friendly and helpful and we’d hoped the cakes would be nice!

On the opposite end of the scale – a cupcake to die for. Well not literally but it was divine.

We popped to Ottolenghi’s in Islington on Saturday after some cupcake baking supply shopping at Gill Wing. Braving the HUGE queues we restricted ourselves to three items – a lemon and blueberry cupcake, a flourless chocolate bundt cake and a chocolate cake with baileys frosting. Everything looked so mouth watering it was difficult to restrict ourselves to three things – every time we thought we’d chosen we’d spot something else!

As it is near impossible to get a seat, we got our goodies to go and headed back home to scoff them with a hot cuppa tea with the heating on – Saturday afternoon bliss.

The cupcake was delicious. A moist blueberry filled base with Italian buttercream on top which melted in your mouth. Absolutely delicious.

Then it got better. The chocolate bundt, which Ottolenghi calls a tea cake, what can I say but – oh my. Well I could add, I wish I'd bought two!

Then it got even better – Manny allowed me a morsel of his baileys cake and again oh my, the cake was incredibly chocolaty, the frosting melted in your mouth – and then the Baileys cream filling – oh.my.god I could’ve eaten a LOT of it. You could taste the Baileys but it wasn’t overpowering – absolutely fabulous.

All fresh, all flavoursome. If only the cupcake world could take that on as their motto.

Finally, I think Angel suspected this cupcake had a hidden secret. Although she may just have been trying to hypnotise it! "look into my eyes"

Sticky toffee pudding with custard

2011-01-19T23:08:00.000Z

Sticky toffee pudding and custard - don't those words just make you drool? Surely it can't just be me?

Last week was cold, wet and miserable. The fun and frivolity of Christmas/Hogmanay seems a long way away and January seems to take forever to be over, and is always a little grim. What I needed was some comfort food. A hug in cupcake form.

I have made sticky toffee cupcakes with caramel frosting before so the cake was a doddle for me. I really love this recipe. I could make it over and over, and eat it again and again. Till I popped.

The cake once again came out sticky and date'y and just scrumptious. There is no other word for it - scrumptious sums it up fully.

I used the Love Bakery custard frosting recipe I had previously topped my rhubarb and custard cupcakes with. I added the specified amount of custard and it just didn't taste custardy enough, so I added more. And some more vanilla as I like my custard to be full of vanilla goodness. Alas I added a smidgen too much custard and the frosting was a little wetter than I'd have liked - it tasted fabulous but didn't pipe so well.

The cakes kept well for 3 days, the flavour maturing in the cupcake over time and the base remained moist until they were all gone.

10 out of 10 for 40point5

2011-01-18T21:00:00.000Z

Last Saturday after visiting the beautiful Peggy Porschen's Parlour we walked through Hyde Park to Kensington High Street to get to the second destination of the day – 40point5.

I first read about 40point5 in Daily Candy a couple of weeks ago and was immediately won over by their patisserie section on their website.

The shop is attached to a small café next door, which unfortunately was v.popular and therefore v.busy so we got our goodies to take away. The lady in the store was lovely – telling us about the chocolates and letting us choose a free sample to try. The chocolate was divine and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes good chocolate. They also had a range of chocolate gifts, such as shoes, guitars and really nice chocolate skulls.

There were two cupcakes on offer – a spiced plum and a tiramisu. I opted for the tiramisu, hoping as this was a cupcake tasting session Manny would opt for the spiced plum. He didn’t. For him it was lust at first sight with a chocolate torte and there was no way anything else was going to tempt him from this Chocolate Nemesis

I have to admit being slightly disappointed that the devils food cupcake hadn’t been available – until I tried the tiramisu. It was delicious. The cake was incredibly tasty and full of boozy goodness as well. And the topping was light and melted in my mouth.

My only criticism is the cakes were kept cooled so they may not be so good if you ate them straight away – however ours had the trip home and the time it took to boil the kettle to get to room temp.

I shall definitely pop by again when I’m in the area to see if they have more cupcakes, and to buy chocolate gifts!

Peggy Porschen's Parlour

2011-01-15T21:06:00.000Z

Isn't it the most gorgeous cake shop you've ever seen? That shade of pink is enough to turn me into the girliest girl ever. I adore it.

Peggy Porschen's Parlour opened in Belgravia last autumn and today we finally got round to visiting. The location is rather odd - walk past perhaps the grimmest place in London, Victoria Coach Station, and you can see this gorgeous vision of pastel pink on the horizon. Like an oasis calling to you in the desert of scummyness.

As were were stomping towards it I had everything crossed we could get a seat inside, as although there were a couple of outdoor tables, it was freezing.

Inside the Parlour is small but perfectly formed. There are two smaller tables for two, and a larger one for about 5 or 6. Photography of the store wasn't allowed, but we could take photos of our gorgeous cakes. There was a choice of approximately 6 cupcakes, some layer cakes, macarons and some other baked goods. Of course we opted for cupcakes. I had a vanilla chiffon and Manny went for a chocolate heaven.

They also offer a selection of house blend teas, including a lovely sounding gingerbread one, but I was tempted by the lovely smelling coffee, and opted for a cappuccino. Manny had a divine smelling hot chocolate.

The vanilla cupcake was lush! The frosting was cream cheese vanilla which is quite unusual but it was absolutely delicious. The cake was moist and tasty, and incredibly fresh, the frosting was, well the icing on the cake. Really well flavoured and really moreish.

Manny's eyes lit up when he spotted the chocolate heaven cupcake. Look at the amount of frosting on there! Wow. And it was incredible. Seriously, delicious! I tried some, and the frosting was a velvety ganache and absolutely delicious. If ever there was a frosting I could have in shot form, this is it! The cake was, again, incredibly moist (I hate to harp on about moist cakes but a moist, fresh cupcake is so important - there are a couple of well known bakers out there I've sampled recently that could do with some lessons in injecting flavour into their cupcakes and about them being fresh but that's a whole other blog post!). There were no such worries here, the cakes were simply magnificent.

As you can see we thoroughly enjoyed them, one of us ensuring we scraped off every last crumb of cake!

I had a little peruse around the shop before paying. As well as cakes and delicious iced cookies, there are Peggy Porschen homewares, lovely home made preserves (including lemon and lemoncello, which I may have to return to buy), and Peggy's blends of teas. We decided we couldn't leave without trying one of her beautiful black forest cupcakes so got one to go, which was lovingly boxed up by the staff. Oh and the staff in the Parlour were really nice - checking we enjoyed everything and ensuring we didn't have any complaints.

Alas disaster struck as we had a long walk through a very windy Hyde Park after our scoffing, and the cake alas was a casualty of the elements.

Even though it was slightly squished, and way less pretty than when it had left the Parlour it still tasted lovely. The rich, delicious chocolate cake cake is filled with some Griottine cherries inside and topped with a kirsch and vanilla frosting. I wished I'd bought two as I had to share it with Manny. Hurumpf.

I highly recommend popping along to Peggy's Parlour for tea and cupcakes. They also do afternoon tea and obviously takeaway. The cupcakes would make perfect little gifts for friends, if you don't want to make your own, and although slightly more than you would pay in other cupcake stores in London, they are worth every penny! I must go back to try the banana toffee asap! And a carrot one! Or I could dig out my copy of the Sainsbury's Magazine with her recipes in and make my own. That's next weekends baking taken care of!

Finally, you can see some photographs of inside the parlour here.

Viva! The Elvis

2011-01-09T19:37:00.000Z

Yesterday would've been Elvis Presley's 76th birthday and I decided what better time for me to conquer my fear of baking with bacon and make The Elvis.

The Elvis cupcake is based on a sandwich which was a favourite of his, the peanut butter, banana and bacon.

It's a pretty simple cupcake to make; a moist banana cupcake base, covered in lots of crunchy peanut butter frosting, with a chunk of streaky bacon to decorate. When I went to Ginger Pig to buy a couple of rashers of streaky they were suspicious of me till I told them it was to decorate cupcakes.

The base recipe if from the Love Bakery cookbook, and while it's very nice it makes rather massive cupcakes. Mine overflowed slightly leading to a bit of an uneven topping to frost onto. The frosting is some vanilla frosting with peanut butter added to taste - quite a lot of peanut butter. It was rather thick and the first attempt at frosting was a disaster, so I had to thin it out slightly with some milk. It still wouldn't go through my favourite nozzle, the 1M, so I had to use the biggest one I have which I'm not so keen on and it didn't make a pretty topping, so in the end, after contemplating, What Would Elvis Do?, we decided just to slap it on, or if you prefer, rustically apply the frosting to the cupcake Elvis style! Not the prettiest cupcakes, but how did they taste?

I let Manny taste the first one, incase it was as disgusting as my previous taste of bacon cupcakes at Batch in New York, and I have to agree with his verdict, bacon goes much better with peanut butter than it does with chocolate. I actually managed to swallow, something I didn't with the bacon/chocolate combo. While it tasted okay I don't really think it added much to the cupcake and ate the rest without bacon, Manny however scoffed two, with extra bacon. Oink.

If you want to make some other Elvis inspired recipes check out Fit for a King, The Elvis Presley Cookbook.

Red Velvet Cupcakes - with the best frosting ever!

2011-01-08T21:48:00.000Z

The notion of a foodie fills me with contempt and horror. But I like greedy people. I think if I was with someone who wasn't greedy that would be a bad sign." Greedy for what? "Everything. Anything. Greedy people generally have an energy and interest in life

As soon as I read about Maison Cupcake's Forever Nigella challenge I had an idea of what I was going to make - Nigella's take on perhaps the prettiest cupcake of all time - the red velvet, from her most recent, and wonderful, book Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home. The theme was seasonal which I interpreted to be comfort food, and what is more comforting than a delicious cupcake and a lovely cuppa?

Nigella's red velvet cupcake contains nothing unusual for those of you who've made red velvet before - just the usual cakey stuff, with some vinegar, buttermilk and LASHINGS of red food colour thrown in. Now, I didn't have a chance to get to Party, Party in Dalston before the episode of Nigella's Kitchen, featuring these cupcakes, aired, just before Christmas, so by the time I got there London's baking community had gone
Christmas Red food colour mad so I couldn't get her shade of choice. Instead I made do with fuschia and as you can see the cakes still came out a beautiful colour of red.

Alas, it was not only the cakes that came out red. I accidentally spilt a teeny tiny splodge of food colouring when opening a new tub, onto the kitchen floor, without noticing, then of course proceeded to walk it through the house. I've spent two days finding splodges of food colour in unusual areas of the house! This is not something I'd imagine Nigella would do! Thankfully the cats somehow avoided walking through it! Something else I can't see Nigella doing is nearly answering the door to the Ocado delivery man in pyjama bottoms covered in so much food dye she resembles John Hurt character in Alien after the 'birth' scene.

So if you're like me and a little bit messy, and blonde, then these cupcakes are messy little buggers to make BUT they are so delicious you forget about the mess as soon as you sink your teeth into one!

I've only made red velvet cupcakes once before, and while they were ok I was never fussed to make them again - however these cupcakes will be made over and over - they were divine! As good, if not better (dare I say it!) than any I've had from some of London's more well known cupcakeries. The base was incredibly moist - we ate the last two cupcakes today, (two days after baking), and they were still moist and full of flavour. But, what really made these cupcakes delicious was the frosting. I'm often not a fan of cream cheese frosting, finding it a bit claggy on the palate but this one was perfect. Nigella calls for some lemon juice or cider vinegar to be added to the frosting, I opted for lemon juice as vinegar sounded yuk, and it really made a difference and made the frosting the kind of melt in your mouth cream cheese frosting I've been striving to make for some time. This will definitely be my 'go to' cream cheese recipe from now on.

It wasn't just me and Manny who enjoyed them - I took some to work and was told by one colleague that they were "the lick" which I'm led to believe means good! They were certainly snaffled quick sharp! I was also encouraged to leave my job and take up baking instead. If only!

And, I don't mean to blow my own trumpet but I have to say I think my cupcakes look better than the domestic goddesses - Nigella seems to just slop on her frosting. Tut tut. Less time stroking fruit suggestively and thrusting your chest at the camera young lady, and more time practising those piping skills. Just imagine the double entendres you could smoulder at the camera while wielding an oozing frosting bag?

Finally, Ms Lawson can spout on about liking greedy people all she wants but she is slightly mean with her cupcake sizes. This recipe was meant to make 24 (I knew it wouldn’t from the quantities) but I got 12 – it could’ve perhaps stretched to 13 as one was a whopper! Mind you who am I to quibble over size when they taste so luscious.

And in a non-cupcake departure I also made the Thai Chicken Noodle Soup from Kitchen and it was so delicious I couldn't wait to scoff it before I got a decent picture. Sorry!

Oh, I forgot, originally I'd said I was going to do something different with the red velvet cupcakes - my original plan had been to top them with pomegranate as for some reason I always think of them when I think of Nigella (her going on about them being jewels gets my goat for some reason) but they were so beautiful and pure looking I couldn't bring myself do sully them!