Asda goes crazy for cupcakes

I popped into Asda today to do some shopping on the way home and spotted this giant cupcake for under a fiver. I think I'd prefer a nice freshly baked cupcake myself but thought I'd share :) Could be good for a party I suppose if you can't afford a fresh baked one! 

They also have a tray of what they call "party cupcakes" for under £2 - it seems that anything that's a little cake is a cupcake these days! If they're anything I'd say they're fairy cakes!

They also have some little recipe cards featuring vanilla cupcakes in their baking goods section - although again I'd say they're fairy cakes as they've got royal icing on top!

Sorry if the pics are a bit blurred - was trying to take the pics without being noticed as I'm not sure you're allowed to take pics in Walmart owned businesses!

The rise of the cupcake

A rather interesting article from The Guardian by Zoe Williams about the rise of the cupcake in the UK.

They are enormous; I mean, I call it the one-handed snack item, but you need pretty big hands and a huge appetite. And that watery icing that might have tasted a bit like lemon is totally yesterday. Now you need two inches of buttercream. It has to be pink, or green, or baby blue. It has to be piped. It has to reach yearningly skywards like the mackerel heads poking out of a stargazy pie. Only it must be delicious-looking. The modern cupcake looks like a child's dream, a death-row tea. To bowdlerise the M&S advert, it is not just cake, it is me-cake, 21st-century-cake, way-of-life-cake

Part of the drama and magnetism of these cakes is their forbidden nature, which is why New Yorkers (forbidders extraordinaire) take to them so lustily. They're really not to eat, but to watch: it's pornography rather than cooking. (I'm disagreeing with the not really to eat part!!!)

In Britain, we have embraced the movement (well, come on - a movement, and you can eat it? Of course we have embraced it), but for subtly different reasons. We are not so in love with self-denial as New Yorkers, and when we make and buy these items, it is with a mind to eating them rather than just staring

There are also some good recipe's for cupcakes to be found on the site here including Magnolia's red velvet (pictured above) which I may take a day off work and make for valentines day! It's rather funny that they choose to put a fairy cake picture (2nd one above) with the article about the rise of the cupcake!

Fairy cakes

are NOT cupcakes BUT after an evening of cleaning the oven/hob and doing a load of washing they tasted rather scrummy!

I bought them in Sainsburys today, they're by Fiona Cairns (http://www.fionacairns.com/ for £1.99 for two (I had the lilac one - the others for Manny). Not as nice as a cupcake, mainly due to the icing (it was royal rather than buttercream) but still the cake was scrummy and light!