The cupcake effect

From last weeks Telegraph, an article explaining how cupcake cafes are helping the property market get back on its feet.

It’s called the cupcake effect, and it could be happening in a street near you. The candyfloss-pink shopfront gives it away: windows stacked with colourful cakes. Every cupcake is a special occasion, washed down with a mug of foamy cappuccino. It’s the late-Noughties equivalent to a glass of champagne. And if you live near such a shop, there is every reason to celebrate – cupcakes mean higher house prices.

The craze was started by the girls in Sex and the City, but their Magnolia bakery in New York’s West Village wasn’t the first. Sugary cake shops are the post-credit crunch version of the posh deli or gastropub; they bring a feel-good factor to an area, making the surrounding streets more desirable.

“These niche boutique shops add prestige to an area, lending a sense of affluence,” says Muir Morton, of Chesterton Humberts in Kensington.

Of course, it could be that it’s the reverse – cupcake shops target affluent or up-and-coming areas that already have a relatively high footfall.

“It’s a win-win situation. The shops are well positioned for business, and local residents get the pleasure of a quality confectioner in the area,” says James Geddes, of buying agency Property Vision.

But there’s an element of the ridiculous about the cupcake trend; grown men and women lining up to buy boxes of colourful cakes? People buying a house simply because it is near a cake shop? It doesn’t seem cool – or right. A cupcake is not something you need; it is a relatively cheap luxury in a world where luxury has been put into question. Could it be that cupcakes are a hangover from the greedy days of 2007?

Cupcakes - ridiculous?? Hush! I agree that cupcake shops tend to be in more affluent areas - a map of London cupcakeries for example would show you that they aren't many cupcake cafes in areas that aren't full of "yummy mummys" - I can only wish they'd open one near my house, but alas that's highly unlikely. You can read the whole article here.

Allergy friendly cupcakes!

This weeks trawl through Google News for cupcake fun led me to the Telegraph and a recipe for BabyCakes wheat free cupcakes. Erin McKenna offers her customers a choice of 100 per cent wheat free or spelt cupcakes. Because the fava and garbanzo bean flours that she uses are unavailable in Britain, all three recipes here use spelt flour, an ancient form of wheat, which is more easily digestible and which many people with allergies can tolerate.

The recipe for butter, sugar and wheat free carrot cupcakes can be found here. I'm very interested in using Agave nectar in cupcakes, something I know Babycakes have been publicising for some time, not sure how it'd work in my normal recipe though- next time I go to NY I shall definitely have to try some of Babycakes cupcakes as we didn't make it this time!

Photo: Ditte Isager

Cupcakes must be stopped

Utter piffle from the Telegraph (nothing new there!)

Every so often, as the privileged occupier of a newspaper column, it falls to me to sound a warning note on a matter of the utmost national importance, and now we face a threat that must be tackled if in future we are all to sleep easier in our beds. I refer, of course, to the invasion of the American cupcake.

The cupcake, a mound of greasy sponge sagging under a grossly overweight hat of buttercream frosting, is an abomination. I fell for it once, or at least I was briefly seduced by the idea of it. I had watched the girls on Sex and the City tucking into cupcakes at New York's Magnolia bakery, and when I was in New York with my husband some years ago we went straight there and ordered the specialty. But even I couldn't manage to make it through the topping: it was so glutinously thick and sweet it made my teeth ache.

Now those very cupcakes are proliferating in fashionable bakeries right across Britain, sweating and stiffening in numerous shop windows. I wouldn't object, particularly, except that they appear to be driving out our own British native, the fairy cake, a thing of delicate glory. Where a third of the cupcake's body weight is composed of bulky frosting, the smaller fairy cake boasts only a thin, hard layer of icing atop its sponge: when married to a large cup of hot tea, it is as near to perfection as a small cake can come.

The cupcake is the culinary equivalent of the chunky, aggressive grey squirrel, pushing out its frailer rival: if we don't act now, fairy cakes will soon only be found in obscure, out-of-the-way tea-shops in the Outer Hebrides or the Isle of Wight. The cupcake is over-iced, overpriced and over here. It must be stopped.

again I say PIFFLE! As for greasy sponge??? I don't recall ever having a proper cupcake that tasted greasy - only the horrid "healthy" ones from Whole Foods which were full of oil. You can get fairy cakes in every supermarket in the UK - mass produced, full of additives to keep them in date for a month and tasting of nothing but sugar and more sugar in the royal icing. Cupcakes however are full of fresh ingredients, no additives and taste better...end of!