I love Love Bakery

I've been meaning to check out Love Bakery for months but everything has conspired to keep me away from it but today we finally made it to the Kings Road to get some lovely cupcakes from them!

The shop is very cute with lots of lovely flavours to choose from and a couple of daily specials. We got a chocolate with chocolate frosting, a chocolate with cream cheese frosting (both for Manny), and a vanilla and a rose for me! The people working there were really nice and asked what decorations you wanted on your cake and the girl serving us agreed with me that it's all part of the fun of a cupcake to get to choose the decorations. As you can see I plumped for the butterfly covered in glitter - the girliest one they had there.

To the cakes...WOW! The base was soft and very fresh on both my cakes, and Manny's. The frosting was divine and melt in the mouth. Definitely straight into the top five for the Love Bakery!

Vicious Cupcakes

According to the ever cute David and Goliath "cupcakes kill!" - only available from the US D&G - for some reason not available on their UK site!

Not sure about the knife imagery in advertising - I like to think she's using to cut a cupcake in half!

Cuppy Cakes I love you so!!!

Just fabulous - another cute tshirt from Hot Topic.

Unicorns poop cupcakes!

The Pilsbury Doughboy may poop croissants but according to the new cute as hell tshirt from Hot Topic cupcakes are pooped by unicorns! Cute overload!

And also available in larger sizes for those of us who have eaten all the cupcakes ;)

Vegan cupcakes take over the world

A friend of my works for Phoenix PAWS animal rescue and kindly bought me this lovely (brand new!!) book for a measly quid the other day from their shop in Clapham!

It's got some lovely pics in it and I plan to make the margarita one for sure - shouldn't be too difficult to get the ingredients in London as I've had a squizz through them so keep an eye out for my vegan offerings!

Thanks to Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for the pics - you can check out their old blog here

Tea and cupcakes

Yesterday we made it to the Covent Garden food market, mainly to get our hands on the Crumbs and Doilies flavour of the month - earl grey.

C&D describe it as a subtle and slightly citrussy taste of the English summer, and I have to agree - the flavour was very subtle but very moreish and the frosting was fab! As usual Crumbs and Doilies make the perfect cupcake :) They're only available for June so make sure you go grab one asap!

Pilsbury Dough Boy cutenesss

Last time we featured the Pillsbury Doughboy he was pooping croissants (click here if you didn't see it, its v.funny!) - this time he's part of an ultra cute salt n pepper shaker set! I love the Pillsbury Doughboy (its ocassionally my pet name for Manny as you can poke his little belly just like the doughboy and he hee-eee's just like the doughboy!)

Click here to buy.

Betty Boop cupcake goodies

I saw this really cute t-shirt in Asda today and it led me to doing a bit of a google search on Betty Boop and cupcakes and it seems there's quite a few things out there featuring the cuteness of Betty and the cuteness of cupcakes so thought I'd share a couple of bits.

The perpetual calendar is available here and the cute girlie slippers (only up to size 5-6 girls) are available here or from your local BHS.

Boop-Oop-A-Doop

Gesundheit!!!

If you've got the sniffles what better way to cheer yourself up as blow your nose so often you look like Rudolph than the cupcake tissue holder!

I've looked for a UK supplier but not luck, so if you want it you'll have to order it from Perpetual Kid in the US. Good news, if you do order it means you can get cupcake floss and cupcake bandages (plasters) as well! I've found the cupcake plasters in the UK but for about £9 which is just extortionate!

Johnny Cupcakes stud earrings

how cute are these? After all the trouble with my stretching in my ear recently (which I wont go into here but suffice to say keloids=yuk=hospital operation with many surgeons=never again!) I probably wont be having any new piercings but am just wondering if these may be too big to put in my nose - or maybe into one of my existing ear piercings....they're cute and I want them! And they're named after cake flavours....how sweet. Even sweeter is the packaging which gives you the nutritional value for the earrings - calories=zero :)

Each individual earring is about the size of a popcorn kernel. Stud earrings come in 6 delicious flavors: strawberry sprinkle, key lime (glow in the dark!), blueberry cream cheese, chocolate raspberry, black forest and red velvet.

Available from Johnny Cupcakes store for the bargain price fo $15.99.

Thanks to JC for the pics.

Horray!

After trying quite a few store bought cupcakes such as Waitrose (choc mint..yuk and lavender..double yuk) and M&S (vanilla -fairycakes not cupcakes and strawberry..yuk) I FINALLY chanced upon a yummy store bought one last week...from Waitrose. I wasn't going to let a couple of bad 'uns turn me off when I spotted the banana and toffee cupcake, as after a stressful day shopping I was in need of one and was nowhere near a good cupcake outlet.

I got it home - a bit squished, and was suprised when I took off the case of a rather plain looking cake to reveal the huge frosting to cake ratio....this would be Manny's dream ratio if only it were chocolate (he's odd and not fond of anything with a banana in!). The cake was really moist and banana'y and the frosting was fab with chunks of toffee and really melt in the mouth...yay for Waitrose!

Cupcakes with Rosie

On Wednesday we headed to Brixton nursing a wee hangover to try some Franco Manca pizza (FAB!) and popped into Rosies Deli just around the corner for a coffee and a cupcake. Thankfully she had a couple of cupcakes left (she was in the process of baking more when we paid up) as they were really cute and very tasty. Rosie has a book out as well which you can buy here.

I highly recommend popping over to Brixton to try some of Rosie's cakes and coffee and a pizza from FM too :)

Tina we salute you ....

and your yummy cupcakes, and coffee, again! It was Manny's 40th on Tuesday so we celebrated with a wee pub crawl around some North London pubs...we needed sustenance for the boozing ahead so popped into Tina We Salute You first for a coffee and a birthday cupcake each and both were yummy! I really can't recommend this place enough - nice cakes, nice surroundings and gorgeous coffee...oh and a few nice pubs along the way too :)

Fair Cake in the news

This weeks Look Magazine has an article about people who have turned their hobby into their living and includes Shikhita Singh who gave up her job in fund management to set up Fair Cake, recent winners of Londonist's cupcake throwdown.

The article also includes a few tips for anyone hoping to "get paid to make cake" including details of course run by Cakes 4 Fun on "starting your own cake business from home" which I may look into. I have been thinking for a while of trying to supplement my income with cupcakes but I'm not sure if there is any room in the market for another cupcake'r.

Shikhita is definitely proof that people can make a living doing something they love!

Cupcake recipe journal

I've been holding out on buying a recipe journal till I found a cupcake one and this weekend my local Tesco's did me proud with this cute little pink journal for a bargain price of £3.75!

Macaroon makes yummy cupcakes

Macaroon is a cafe run by acclaimed chef Alison Seagrave, formerly of Harvey Nichols.

If ever I find myself in Bamford, Lancashire I shall definately be popping in to try a cupcake, or two..and perhaps a macaroon :) You can read all about Alison and the cafe, here.

Address: 569 Bury Road, Bamford, Lancashire, OL11 4DQ

I heart curry

and obviously I heart cupcakes so I think I'd give the tandoori cupcake from Bleeding Heart Bakery a go...

curry cupcake, cayenne, mustard seed, cardamon soaked green raisins, fresh mango, pineapple, curry frosting and topped with a cardamon pod and a strip of cayenne

pity it's too far away from me to try!

Wonder if the recipe will be in their soon to be published cookbook?

Thanks to Bleeding Heart Bakery for the pic!

Tweet Tweet

Thought I'd share some bird themed cupcake cuteness.

First up some adorable bird house cupcakes from Flickr user Neviepiecakes - she made them for a Woman and Home cupcake competition! They are just too cute to eat!

Secondly these super-cute cupcake toppers available from Etsy seller The Cupcake Girls.

Kiss Kupcakes ROCK

One of my fave ever cupcakerys, Cupcake in Berlin posted this fab picture of their Kiss cupcakes on their Myspace and I just had to share!

I cannot wait to go back to Berlin in November!

Thanks to Cupcake for the pic

Flavour of the month @ Crumbs and Doilies

This month C&D have brought back their most popular ever flavour of the month - Earl Grey. I can't remember if I tried it last time - so long ago, so many cupcakes - so will have to try it again to remind myself!

Available Saturday's at Partridges Market, Kings Road and Thursdays from Covent Garden Market.

Thanks to C&D for the pics.

Johnny Cupcakes in London

If you don't know who Johnny Cupcakes is click here, if you do know and you want to meet him he'll be in Leicester Square, London for a meet-up at 3pm - wear your Johnny Cupcake tshirt if you have one :) There will be free cupcakes from the lovely Crumbs and Doilies as well to tempt you along! I would be attending, however we're having a night out for my lovely hubby's 40th birthday so of course that takes priority - even over cupcake events :)

If anyone who reads this goes please let me know how it went!!

Thanks to JC for the pic!

Cupcake Throwdown winner announced...

it was Fair Cake! You can read all about the cupcakes, and the eating (and rather too much wastage of cupcakes for my liking by the looks of some of the photos), here. My faves, taking part, didn't even make any of the top 3 listings except for Bea's and Crumbs and Doilies (no Outsider Tart or Buttercup...pah) making me have a horrific moment where I thought that maybe I don't know my cupcakes very well at all! But that moment passed, thankfully, and I realised that maybe I have different taste when it comes to cupcakes- there seemed to have been a lot of complaints about "too much frosting" which kinda makes a cupcake a cupcake in my opinion...if you don't like frosting maybe try a bun instead?

You can read about when we tried Fair Cake's cupcakes (on snow day) here

Thanks to Londonist for the pic of the winner.