Oooh sounds like a bakewell cupcake to me!

This months Crumbs and Doilies flavour of the month is definitely worth a visit to Partridges Food Market I'd say, or you can order them online as well.

A moist and light almond sponge made with organic ground almonds and topped with a sweet, tangy cherry buttercream made using real cherries

I love cherry flavoured stuff (as my massive consumption of cherry carmex will attest!) these sound right up my street! As the title says these sound just like a bakewell tart cupcake..how very English and yummy!

C&D have also sent out details of how to get your hands on their yummy Easter cupcakes - I highly recommend the little egg boxes - we had one last year and they were very tasty!

Holy Cow Cupcakes

I was reading an article via Google news on Whoopie Pies (aka cupcakes evil cousin), which led me to Holy Cow Cupcakes' website. I just loved the name and had to check them out! I love their little blurb on their site:

Naturally every item that leaves our kitchen contains our secret ingredient: love. Because a cupcake made without love really isn't a cupcake at all.

Call me an old sap but that's how I think of cupcakes (and cooking in general I have to say!), which is why I don't get some of the sour faces in London cupcakerys sometimes..I'd love to work every day surrounded by cupcakes. Nothing makes me feel happier than baking..except maybe a hug (sorry my hangovers making me soppy!)

Btw, we saw whoopie pies in New York and Manny had said he wanted to try one but we just never got round to it as we were constantly full or trying to keep room for a cupcake!

Thanks to Erin for the pic of the Erin cupcake from Holy Cow!

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!

Eat dessert first!

These tea towels seem to have been made just for me!

From Primark -which I generally only ever pop into on the off chance they have new cupcake items! All my tea towels are from there and all covered in cupcakes!

Punks love the pink cupcakes!

They look quite similar to the last lot and tasted just as good - although I think my frosting was even nicer this time - I whipped it for 8mins rather than 5 so it was even fluffier! Nothing better after a bad week at work than licking the frosting bowl!

Currently winging their way down to Plymouth with Terminal Decline and Dirty Love in a pink transit van!

The next lot will be a different colour I promise!

Eating cupcakes in Hell's Kitchen

Tuesday was kinda deemed to be Manny's day as we were going to visit the USS Intrepid - something which I was kinda dreading, but it was ok...for the first few hours.

After many hours of wandering around looking at planes, helicopters, space shuttles, boats, Concorde's etc we took a wander around Hell's Kitchen to look for Amy's Bread as I knew they had a branch in HK.

Thankfully for our aching feet it didn't take long to find it (I was a whiz with the block system by then if I did say so myself!) - a really busy little store with lots of yummy goodies, both sweet and savoury, inside. Unfortunately it was too busy to get a seat, so we took away a couple of cupcakes to have with a coffee back at the B&C*. I got a yellow cake with pink frosting and Manny got a devils food cupcake with decadent chocolate silk frosting..you're in Hell so you may as well be decadent!

My cupcake was one of the best I tried in NY, very soft flavoursome base with lots of really tasty, vanilla frosting. Manny's cake barely touched the sides so I know he enjoyed it ;)

Amy's Bread, Hells Kitchen, 672 Ninth Avenue, (Between 46th & 47th Streets)

*I keep mentioning our B&C in posts - this is because where we stayed was called the East Village Bed and Coffee - you can visit their website here, and read all about Mango the dog who I wanted to adopt - I've included a pic of him in this post as he was desperately trying to snaffle a lick of my Amy's cupcake! If you're ever visiting NY I cannot recommend this place highly enough - when we go back, hopefully for Halloween 2010 I know this is where I'll be staying!

Mango was a rescue dog and you can read all about his journey to NY from Culebra, Puerto Rico here. I hearted Mango and Miss Blanquita his little friend :)

Ciao for Now..and Barbie's giant cupcake

So I've nearly finished with my round up of New York cupcakes we ate, and, mostly, loved!

On the Monday we went to Times Square and visited Sephora, Sanrio and some other stores and , best of all, rode on the Toys R Us ferris wheel, in the My Little Pony carriage (There is pictorial evidence of this on my myspace page). We also saw the huge T-Rex there and it was Barbie's birthday so the entrance to her house had a giant cupcake outside :)

After all that shopping I needed a coffee, and a cupcake so on the way back to the B&C we popped into Ciao For Now, another cupcake cafe totally near where we were staying! It was a really quaint little cafe, with lots of quirky furniture, including a fish tank made from an ancient tv set.

We ordered the usual, a vanilla and a chocolate and a couple of coffees (again good coffee - do you get bad coffee in NY?). The cupcakes were ok if a little tasteless - the frosting tasted nice, but the base was a bit tasteless with the merest hint of vanilla. Manny's chocolate cupcake was very soft with lots of frosting and very chocolaty - just how he likes it.

Ciao for Now, 523 East 12th St, between Ave A and B