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

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! 

We don't need no vegetation

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.

Un Petit Pois

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.