I heart the Tarts!

I heart Outsider Tart's cupcakes and it seemed like AGES since I'd had one so I made sure we didn't miss this months cupcake weekend (even though we really should've gone to the laundrette today as our piece of plop Hotpoint machine decided to stop working for like the zillionth time and we have a tonne of washing to do before our holidays!)

Anyways back to OT's cupcake extravaganza. I was beginning to think we'd never get there due to a footwear issue with Manny, however when we got there thankfully there were still some cupcakes left...if not someone would've been getting up early tomorrow to go to Chiswick for some!

I got one unfilled, strawberries and cream and one filled, orange poppy (filled with OT's own lemon curd which is FAB!) and Manny had a milk chocolate and a filled almond joy (filled with almond cream which I snaffled a bit of and it was gorgeous)!

Seriously I'm not just saying this cuz these guys are really nice but they have definitely got a magic touch with cupcakes - they were all utterly fantastic! I cannot tell you how gorgeous the strawberries and cream one tasted -there just aren't they words, and I love the fact that every time I go there I try something different - who'd have thought of a poppy seed cupcake? The only word I can really use to describe them all is YUMMY!

Some birthday gifts

It's not my birthday for another few days but I'm in New York so yesterday I met my friend Dennis at Balans in Soho for breakfast (yummy smoked salmon eggs benedict if anyone's interested) and we exchanged birthday gifts as his was last Tuesday!

Amongst my other fab Hello Kitty gifts, (including a very fancy electric toothbrush and bubblegum toothpaste!), were these cute cupcake items!

How cute!

I'm not really a baby person (although I do like buying little cute clothes for baby's..but then I like cute) but this hat is adorable and I'm totally jealous of the little baby...I want one..the hat not the baby (breathe Manny, breathe!!)

From Etsy seller Artology

(Paper)chasing cupcakes!

At the weekend I popped into Paperchase and happened to spot these cupcake goodies.

They have a few more cute bits but they didn't have them in the store I went to, however if you're interested your best bet is probably to go to the giant store in Tottenham Court Road or the Westfield one as they tend to have everything!

The bottom pic is a roll of wrapping paper - I have a wild idea that I will wallpaper one of my kitchen walls in this and then varnish over it or something - I wonder if that's possible..time for me to do some Google research!

Hmmmmmmmm cupcakes....drool

Although still showing a release date of March 12th on Amazon, my Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook arrived yesterday and I cannot stop drooling over it - it is GORGEOUS! Seriously it is perhaps the most gorgeous cookbook I've ever seen! Honest!

There are tonnes of cupcake recipes, including their fabulous red velvet and green tea (and the usual suspects, vanilla, chocolate and Manny's fave - black bottom!). But it's not all cupcakes, there are recipes for layer cakes, including Hummingbird and a Brooklyn Blackout cake that I think if Manny spots the pic will have him licking the page! There are muffins, savoury and sweet, cookies and brownies, including their frosted version.

I'm hoping to get some time this weekend to make the vanilla cupcakes as the book is just too gorgeous not to!

Go buy the book now!! Available on Amazon and in Hummingbird Bakeries!

Oh and Gwyneth Paltow endorses the book on the front but please don't let that put you off!

Me want cookie, me eat cookie!

So yesterday we FINALLY got our hands on some of Bea's ultra cute cookie monster cupcakes and they were worth the wait!!!

They were utterly adorable, possible the cutest cupcakes I've ever seen and they tasted just as good! I'm not usually a fan of chocolate cupcakes but these were really tasty and the frosting was out of this world - it was chocolate fudge frosting and there was loads of it - it was frosting heaven!

You can order them (no minimum) and I implore you if you like cupcakes to try them!

The hunt for the Cookie Monster

On Friday my lovely hubby read my blog about the new Bea's Cookie Monster cupcakes and immediately wandered up there to get me one! Unfortunately they were sold out, but being the fabtastic husband that he is he bought me some of their other cupcakes.

They tasted as good as they looked - the base of the cakes were really soft and fresh! And each cupcake was covered in lashings of yummy frosting (now I've gotten used to the non-buttercream icing I really like it!). I think the best one was Manny's chocolate ganache topped one! And to top it all Manny pre-ordered two of the Cookie Monster cupcakes to collect! I really am spoilt :)

Angel can has cupcakez?

I couldn't resist sharing this picture of Angel drooling over our recent freebie cupcakes from the lovely Lola's. She gets very excited by a pudding and loves a wee bit of frosting :)

btw - the link takes you to Angel's very own Catster page - you can check out Demon's here (he's not so fond of cupcakes - he much prefers trying to "taste" Angels bottom unfortunately)

A recap of the London cupcake tour

I'm posting this for the lovely Kara, a fellow cupcake addict, who posted asking for any suggestions of where to visit in London, specifically near Knightsbridge.

We did a mini cupcake tour last March for my birthday and all 3 destinations are within walking distance of Knightsbridge and I thought I'd repost the links for Kara and anyone else interested.

The tour went from Crumbs and Doilies at Partridges Market (about 2 mins walk from Sloane Square tube) to Hummingbird Bakery near South Kensington Tube, ending up at Buttercup near High Street Kensington (where you can pop into Wholefoods for a cuppa to re-energise!). You can walk it all in an hour or so (probably quicker if you don't keep stopping) or you can do it all via the underground, or just go to one of them!

You can check our tour at the following links

Crumbs and Doilies

Hummingbird

Buttercup

Feel free to ask any more questions. Oh and if you're near Richmond or Chiswick I urge you to go to Outsider Tarts cupcake weekend - which is next weekend. You wont taste better I promise you!!!

Also if anyone else has any questions about cupcakes in London please get in touch! And dont forget to check out Kara's blog!

The pics above are from our tour last year :)

Fancy a mouthful of Mickey Rourke?

Me neither but I would happily eat one of these lovey-licious cupcakes bearing pics of those nominated for this weekends Oscars. Although I draw the line at eating one with Kate Winslett on...it'd probably be soggy with fake tears!

They can be bought from Eleni's in NYC, along with their movie quote cupcakes.

How supercalifragilous expialidocious

Thanks to Serious Eats NY for alerting me to these!

Fancy eating Mickey Rourke

Cookie Monster cupcakes

Bea from Beas of Bloomsbury sent me a link to her Flickr and her most recent cupcakes - aren't they FAB!

I plan to pop there tomorrow on the way to work to see if they have any in stock!

Cupcake Wars

From Serious Eats...

The blog TV Tango thinks it has found evidence of an upcoming cupcake-themed show from the Food Network:

"About 10 days ago, Food Network filed a trademark application to protect 'Cupcake Wars' for "a continuing program about food and cooking." I can't find any other details about the show and my requests to Food Network for more information went unanswered. Wouldn't it be awesome if Food Network and The Post teamed up to do a "Cupcake War" series with each episode focusing on a different region? Manhattan one week, Chicago the next, then LA, and Orange County and on and on."

Of course, just filing a trademark application doesn't guarantee that the Food Network will create or air the show, but it's some good intel on TV Tango's part.

I hope if they do make it they'll come to London and do an international special!!! In 15 days I shall be in NY beginning my very own tasting in the Cupcake Wars of Manhattan/Brooklyn ..wuhu

Shop cute....pass it on!

Shana Logic's logo is "shop indie - pass it on" but I think it should be "shop cute" as their stuff is seriously adorable!

Today's email update brought us these fantastic armwarmers (made by MTCoffinz whom I bought I red devil cupcake bag from via his Etsy store last year) and this wonderful scarf featuring the happy cupcake!

Cute, cute, CUTE!

Crappy Valentines

I'm a bit bah humbug* about Valentines this year however to counter-act the crappiness of the day I ate cupcakes** from Hummingbird Bakery which were gorgeous, and bought myself some rather spiffy pyjamas for a fiver from Primark.

*or whatever the equivalent for made up days when you're meant to be romantic is...piffle cupid??!

** I didn't eat all of these...well not at once!

Valentine's Slow Food Market

We went on Friday to the Valentine's Slow Food Market at the South Bank and as well as a gorgeous haloumi sandwich and some fabulous beetroot houmous I also got a couple of cupcakes. A raspberry rose one, which I think was from Caroline's Cakes and Candy, (there wasn't any sign and I totally forgot to ask..it was too cold to think and I had a slight hangover after enjoying a few drinks watching Lordi on Thursday night!), and a red velvet one from Chocstar.

The raspberry one was quite inedible I'm afraid - the "frosting" tasted like just butter with some crunchy sugar on top and the cake wasn't at all nice - straight into the bin with it! Chocstar's red velvet wasn't as red as I've seen but I had been pre-warned by Petra (Chocstar's owner!) that the recipe hadn't seemed to work (she'd given me the cupcake for free as she wasn't sure about it), however it tasted really nice - maybe not the nicest red velvet I've had but by no means the worst! The frosting was also really good - not as sweet as some red velvet frostings can be! Manny got a chocolate fudge brownie from Chocstar and I had a bite and it was mindblowingly good!

Petra also told us that there will be a CHOCOLATE FAIR at the South Bank in April - I've googled it and so far only found this - I cannot wait though :)

Would you eat a Gordon Brown cupcake?

Zilly Rosen, a pastry artist in Buffalo, took her treats to Washington this weekend, constructing side-by-side portraits of Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln using more than 5,600 cupcakes.

But the edible exhibit, on display Saturday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in honor of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, had a short shelf life.

Just before 5 p.m., after a five-hour display period, the cupcakes started flying off the ground as salivating spectators devoured the mural from the outside in. Within minutes nearly all of Lincoln’s face had disappeared. But an hour later — thanks to either full stomachs or a respect for the sitting president — the majority of Mr. Obama’s face was left intact.

The mural had something for all tastes: Lincoln, on the right, was recreated in vanilla cupcakes with chocolate butter-cream frosting. Mr. Obama’s likeness, on the left, was made out of chocolate cupcakes with vanilla butter-cream frosting. The stripes on the American flag backdrop were red velvet.

Ms. Rosen and a few helpers assembled the mural in a matter of hours Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. It was on public display on Valentine’s Day from noon until 5 p.m., when visitors were invited to help de-install the artwork. The whole affair was broadcast live on the museum’s Web site. The video and a time-lapse feature of the portrait’s journey from construction to crumbs will be available on the museum’s blog, Eye Level, next week.

Ms. Rosen, the proprietor of Zillycakes, a custom cake shop in Buffalo, first fused gastronomy and politics on Election Day, creating a 1,240-cupcake portrait of Mr. Obama, which she served to volunteers at his campaign’s Buffalo headquarters Nov. 5, according to her Web site.
“It started as a crazy love poem in food dedicated to an amazing candidate,” Rosen wrote. She calls her work “equal parts installation, performance, homage, and dessert.”

Thanks to the Caucus blog/New York Times for the pics and story!

Can't imagine what the UK version would be - Gordon Brown and Maggie Thatcher?? Both have "led" the country into the crap...and I can only imagine what flavour the cupcakes would be!!

I am a cute cupcake!

What kind of cupcake are you? My Result: Cute Cupcake Anne Quiz School Take this quiz & get your result

What kind of cupcake are you? » Quiz Question Maker

I took this Quiz (which I spotted on Kara's blog and I am a cute cupcake..wuhu

The quiz is originally from Lots of Sprinkles blog - which is a really cute blog!

Send a virtual cupcake

When you send a virtual cupcake to a friend or loved one this February, Electrolux will donate a $1 to The Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (with a minimum of $25,000 and a maximum of $30,000) as part of its $500,000 commitment to help fight ovarian cancer.You choose the flavor, decorate it, and add a personal message. Then email it to anyone who deserves a little treat, or save it to your desktop to brighten your day.And, to encourage people to help spread the word, everyone who logs on to the site and sends a virtual cupcake will be automatically entered for a chance to win a stylish new front-load Washer & Dryer in “Red Hot Red” from Electrolux. How sweet is that?

Further information here.

Cake that...

From today's Daily Candy (London) (I stole the title from there too as I like it..sorry DC)

Mandatory hand-holding, pricey champagne, cringe-worthy you-complete-me’s and heart-shaped, well, everything.
Not your idea of romance?
If it’s the sweet stuff you’re after, look no further than home-baked cupcakes from new London-based bakers Lily Vanilli. Chocolate, vanilla, red velvet or cherry sponges come laden with vanilla, mango, coconut or orange buttercream frosting and topped with fresh fruit or nuts. Brownies and custom cakes are available to order, too.
To indulge in something decadent without a heavy commitment, there’s a flourless almond poppy seed cupcake on offer.
At least something will rise to the occasion.

The plan for Sunday is to go along and try some of Lily's fab looking cupcakes so hopefully I shall have some pictures/an update on them soon :)

I scream for ice cream!

Another cupcake to add to the list of things to try - an ice cream cupcake from Cold Stone Creamery...yum! I have a feeling Manny will be running to the nearest one to get his hands on one of those double chocolate devotions!!!

A fantastic gift....

I arrived at work last Tuesday after a wonderful "snow day" and found an email from Lola's in my in box - they were dismayed to read that I'd had a bad experience with their cupcake from Selfridges and wanted to send me a free box to show how great their cupcakes can be. Although never one to turn down a cupcake I replied and said it wasn't necessary to send me freebies as I was already aware they could be nice from Selfridges, however I'd just obviously got a bad one!

However on Wednesday my reception at work called me to tell me there was a "beautiful package" down there for me and lo and behold a huge be-ribboned box of gorgeous looking cupcakes were waiting for me! All 12 of them looked STUNNING and I shared some of them with some friends in the office and took some home and I have to say they were some of the tastiest cupcakes I've had - the base of all of them was moist (including the ones we saved for the next day), the flavours were really nice and the frosting was FANTASTIC!

Flavours we tried included carrot, chocolate, black and white, peanut butter and coconut. The pink ball covered one was one of the cutest cupcakes I've seen and Manny devoured all but one of the truffle-like balls himself...my chubby hubby indeed!

Thanks to Lola's for such a lovely gift - it was trully scrumptious! Oh and those I shared with in the office were definitely converted to cupcakes!