I Heart Cupcakes on Tour - Athens

 This is part two of my three part series about my recent travels - aka 'the bad'.

A few days before we boarded the Eurostar to Paris for my 40th birthday we flew to Athens for Up the Hammers festival as Manny was playing there and as I'd never been to Greece I decided to tag along.

I was not a fan of Athens on arrival, mainly because we were staying in an area labelled the 'Greek Camden' which I can only say looked more like the Greek version of downtown Basra after a raid by lots of junkie prostitutes. Our hotel was lovely but the area outside it was not.

However the rest of Athens was lovely. The people on the whole were amazingly friendly, the food was good when we found it (our area was very much in the recession hit part - everything was closed apart from several toilet seat stores - Greeks must go through a LOT of loo seats) and the sights were amazing. Standing on top of Lycavittos Hill or the Acropolis just takes your breath away. The stunning beauty of it is awe inspiring. And how can I not love somewhere where trees with juicy ripe citrus fruit are everywhere!

It was near Lycavittos Hill we chanced upon Cake.

Their selection of cake was quite disappointing if I'm honest. Chocolate, vanilla and red velvet ALL with incredibly bright frosting - all vanilla frosting as far as we could ascertain.

 Tasting them helped in no way decipher what flavour the frosting was. We are still trying to decide what the fuck it was made out of. I'm pretty certain it was NOT butter based that's for sure, and if it was,  butter in Greece is not something I'd ever wish to try again. In trying to decide what it was I had to eat a few bites and the only thing I've ever put in my mouth of a similar taste and texture was play-doh. I am about 90% sure it's made of some kind of edible modelling clay. Oh and dear god the cake was dry and tasted of absolutely nothing. Just air and dryness, oh and a sweaty stickyness that was not pleasant. Even Manny couldn't eat more than a bite of his 'chocolate' one. It was one of those instances when we had to immediately brush our teeth after tasting these. Vile is the only way I can describe it. And wrong. Ok that's two ways.

I kinda smooshed about with the 'frosting' to try and show the texture but I'm not sure it comes across in the photo - it was totally mouldable - just like play-doh. I honestly think I ate play-doh.

I said to Manny we should move to Athens and open a cupcake shop immediately in Athens as this place has several locations - imagine how nice tasty cupcakes with actual flavour and buttercream would be received!!

To make up for the vile cupcakes I had to share the best food we ate while there - pork chops and Greek salad from Telis in an area that was described by our cab driver along the lines of 'very dangerous, you may die'. It was a little run down, with police everywhere but the chops and wonderfully fresh Greek salad made up for it. And the staff were lovely and friendly and no-one tried to kill us so..bonus.

And some amazing Gelato pre the walk up the Acropolis on a hot Saturday afternoon!

Finally, we had some lovely macarons in Costa  - I know, I know another chain but we needed a sit down and some coffee!

I Heart Cupcakes on Tour - Paris

This is part one of a series of three blog posts about my recent travels - the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Paris has the pleasure of being 'the good'

I went to Paris early in March for my 40th birthday. And fell in love. Not just with the cakes but with everything. I LOVED it there. I think it could be because you can buy anything flavoured with Speculoos. 

 Whilst there the best thing I ate wasn't actually a cupcake but a Speculoos cake from ...Starbucks. I know, we went to Paris and the best thing we ate was from Starbucks...but this cake was AMAZING. So good we went twice and ate it. We'd originally just popped in to use the loo and fell in love with the cake!

We also shared some Cookies and Cream cake - Starbucks in Paris have much better baked goods than here.

We didn't make it to half the places we meant to go to eat in in Paris - mainly because we spent the two days walking round enjoying the city. Oh and buying lots of gore DVDs (Manny found the shop of his dreams just near our hotel). Oh and buying chocolate. And beer.

We did make it to Berko however - Paris's main cupcake store. We went to the branch just up the hill from Moulin Rouge, a few minutes walk from our hotel, Le Chat Noir, which I highly recommend.

We took the cupcakes back on Eurostar and unfortunately they got a little squished but we managed to salvage them so it wasn't a total cupcake disaster.

Our choices included Speculoos and the Hi Hats you can see above. We also got banofee, cookies and cream and chocolate. Although the Speculoos was rather bland and uninspiring, with some odd tasting frosting, the rest were rather good, if a little dry. I think if we'd eaten them there they'd have been much fresher. I would definitely go back to try some other flavours if I went back to Paris. I was especially taken with the fact they use little pipettes to inject coulis into the fresh fruit cakes - as I've done with alcohol into my cupcakes previously.

We also ate some macarons at Dalloyau - the Champagne one being very nice.

The same cannot be said for Eric Keyser's pink praline brioche - dry, tasteless and I really didn't like pink pralines. Thankfully I'd resisted buying a giant bag I saw earlier in the day in G. Detou.

Finally for my 40th birthday we chose not to eat anywhere fancy but instead went to Quick, the local burger chain to have Star Wars burgers - I had the Jedi burger while Manny opted for the Darth Vader one. We are totally classy non?

Oh yeah And I brought back quite a bit of Speculoos.

Oh, another finally - we didn't make it to Ladurée in Paris but we did go to Harrods yesterday and have coffee/hot chocolate and a cake - my first Religieuse - a chocolate one which was amazing. I also bought a box of six macarons in their new limited edition Hello Kitty boxes.

Too cute. 

I Heart Cupcakes goes to Madrid

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.

Eten lekker cupcakes in Tilburg

Last week we visited the lovely Dutch town of Tilburg in Holland to see my favourite band in the world, the band I have tattooed on my arm - MANOWAR!

Once I'd booked our tickets, flights and hotel, I got straight onto google and looked for the next most important thing - cupcakes in the vicinity of Tilburg. At first it seemed like we might have to travel to Amsterdam, but then I was told by a fellow blogger that they weren't really worth travelling for and then after a few hours I found Lily's Cupcakes, and was excited to hear from Lily on Twitter that by the time we visited she would be selling her cupcakes in Mugs n Muffins.

As it turned out Mugs n Muffins was about 5 minutes brisk walk from our hotel, and we walked everywhere briskly as it was about -9! When we visited there were only two flavours available - death by chocolate and champagne - so we had one each. I opted for champagne, it was lovely - really moist and the top seemed to be dipped in sparkling sugar syrup as it was gorgeous and sparkly! The frosting was really fresh and flavoursome. Manny's death by chocolate was very aptly named - a total chocolate overload for a chocolate fan! As you can see we scoffed them up!

We visited every day to see if any more flavours were available but alas they only ever had those two, and on the last day none at all so we only tried one Dutch cupcake but given the amount of Bailey's coffee, whipped cream, booze and superb food we had its probably just as well no other flavours were available or I may not have fitted on the plane!

I hope the title of this post reads 'Eating yummy cupcakes in Tilburg' in Dutch as I used google translator - apologies if it says anything else and upsets any Dutch speaker reading this!