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! 

Most wonderful cupcake of the year

The end (of the year) is nigh and I was going to do a round up of my favourite cupcakes I've bake this year but I don't have time as I have a birds nest of over-dyed hair to sort out and make up to slap on so instead have decided to post about my favourite cupcakes I've bought this year. It was a close run thing - I LOVED quite a few cupcakes.

First up the runners up.

Best international cupcake goes to, Cupcake Berlin.

Truly DELICIOUS cupcakes with the nicest peanut butter frosting I've ever tasted. Also a lovely little cafe full of lovely treats, including tonnes of vegan friendly goodies.

Next. Best UK cupcake out of London goes to Swallow Bakery.

GREAT cakes, shame about the service. I plan to go back in 2011 and check it out again.

Runner up in the London cupcake of the year goes to Love Bakery.

Not only have I never had a bad cupcake from them, they released my favourite cupcake book ever, Love Bakery: Cupcakes from the Heart, this year. I've baked loads from it since I received it, and I hope to bake loads more next year. It is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it to all my readers.

An honourable mention must go to Ms Cupcake and her vegan cakes that still confound me. How can you make a cake taste soooooo good without butter? I just don't know. But Ms Cupcake and her team of vegan bakers know the secrets and they should be applauded. Also Mellissa is one of the loveliest people you could meet on the cupcake scene.

Her vegan bounty cupcake was one of the highlights of Cupcake Camp for me! Absolutely delicious and more chocolaty than some ultra expensive vile cupcakes that pertain to be loaded with Valrhona. (If I was doing worst cupcake of the year btw Cox, Cookies and Cake would be the winner - this place doesn't deserve to exist, and I feel probably wouldn't it if it wasn't fronted by two 'celebs').

The fabulous bounty cupcake however leads me on nicely to my favourite cupcake event of the year. There can only be one winner. Cupcake Camp, organised by the amazing Daisy. I am already thinking of cakes to bake at next year's event! It was an awesome day out and really showed how many great bakers there are out there.

And now, for the winner of my best cupcake/best bakery of 2010.

For me there could only be one winner. I've only had their cakes twice but the first time was enough to convince me that they were fabulous. And the winner is, *drum roll*, Kooky Bakes.

I first tried Scott's baking in July and was so overwhelmed by the selection I barely ate a cupcake! When faced with the Snickers Slice my brain just went into a peanut butter zombie trance and could think of nothing else. Hmmm peanuts. The SS incidentally probably wins my non-cupcake baked good of the year. How could it not - look at it, behold its beauty! My first visit wasn't cupcake free however and I did try a delicious black forest gateau cupcake.

We visited Upmarket the weekend before Christmas to pick up a box of cupcakes from Kooky to ensure we ended the year on a cupcake high, and we were not disappointed.

Although there was a slight, Anne based, disaster getting the cupcakes home in one piece (I blame it being so cold I had to keep swinging my arms to keep warm - poor Scott was dressed up like he was Scott of the Antarctic when we visited the stall!), the cakes slight squishedness in no way detracted from the AMAZING flavour of each and every cake.

Each cake was moist and incredibly flavoursome, each frosting a bite of heaven, as they were so light. Manny was awestruck by the Chocotecture cupcake - dark chocolate sponge injected with a white chocolate ganache,  topped with a ring of white chocolate and a ring of milk chocolate mouse buttercreme. After scoffing many chocolate cupcakes I finally think Manny has found his favourite. Every cake we had was delicious. I had a raspberry and white chocolate and a red velvet. I think I have finally found the best red velvet ever. Utterly amazing.

My plan for next year is to go to Kooky Bakes and get some cakes home in one piece so I can finally show you all how beautiful they look pre me getting my ham-fisted hands on them!

Finally, I wanted to wish all the people who follow my blog and leave such nice comments, and send me such lovely messages of support, a incredibly Happy New Year. I hope you all have a wonderful cupcake-filled 2011.

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise

The Love Bakery book is fast becoming my favourite cupcake book. If I fancy baking something different it is definitely my go to book at the moment. The recipes are incredibly easy to follow, don't require lots of strange ingredients (well buttermilk but I don't consider that strange anymore) and the cakes I've made from it have all been a success, which I can't say for many other cookbooks I have!

I first made these cupcakes last week on a whim after work when I'd had a bit of a shitty day and needed cheering up. They were very tasty, however not quite right as I was missing one vital ingredient, honey for the frosting, so decided to re-bake them yesterday to see how they tasted when made properly. There is only once word to describe them - DELICIOUS.

All pretty in it's gingham case (from Sainsburys)

gasp...naked! 

The cake is a pretty basic cupcake with two apples (peeled and grated) added to the batter, which makes the cake incredibly moist. I used some plump Pink Lady apples as they're my favourite but you could use any apple you like. It also has a generous amount of cinnamon and this really brings out the apple in the cake.

I'm not a great fan of honey (even though my husband insists I should be because I love Winnie the Pooh so much) so when I tried the honey cinnamon frosting yesterday I was a little disappointed in it as it tasted a bit too honey-ish for me (go figure - it had 2 x tbsp of honey in it!) and had decided that if I were to make these again, I'd frost with custard frosting instead. However, when I came back from work today I had one with a cup of tea and the honey-taste had mellowed a bit and was much nicer. Or maybe I'm just growing to like it? In fact I much preferred this, the proper frosting, to my vanilla version I did it with the first time. Also the cake is still very fresh and moist. This recipe is definitely one I'd recommend -  an all round fabulous cupcake for the colder months of the year.

 First attempt with a vanilla frosting

naked vanilla frosted cupcake

You can get the Love Bakery book from The Book People for the bargain price of £4.99. 

As wonderful as these cupcakes are, before you bake a batch and sit down with a pot of tea to scoff them all remember the wise words of Pooh “When having a smackerel of something with a friend, don't eat so much that you get stuck in the doorway trying to get out.”

Roobarb and Custard Cupcakes*

I got the Love Bakery book, Cupcakes from the Heart, last month and I can hand on heart say it is one of my favourite cookbooks in my collection. So far I have made vanilla (sneakily I used Love's vanilla cupcake recipe via the  Amazon reader for my Daring Bakers Challenge in August to make Brown Butter Baked Alaska cupcakes -they were divine I recommend trying the vanilla cupcakes using browned butter!), the pumpkin cupcakes and my favourite so far, the rhubarb and custard cupcakes.

The day my book arrived at work a colleague and I drooled over it for some time, deciding that the rhubarb cupcakes sounded lush. I was lucky enough to try one the very next day at Love Bakery and it lived up to the lushness!

A couple of weeks ago while Manny was at a festival I took a break from my baking with odd ingredients and decided to bake something delicious for a change - there was only one contender - rhubarb and custard.

The recipe suggests making a fresh rhubarb compote for the centre or using rhubarb jam. I checked our local Sainsburys for rhubarb but it looked beyond rotten and I couldn't face a bus or tube journey to Waitrose so I got some tinned rhubarb and made my own compote with that - it came out really nicely if I do say so myself.

I also got some lovely little rhubarb and custard sweets to decorate the cupcakes, but be warned, if you do this only do it when you are serving them as the colour runs out of the sweets over-night into the frosting!

These are definitely in my favourite cupcakes to bake list - nice moist cake, with a tangy filling and a lovely custard'y topping. How could you fail to love it!?

*Every time I think of Rhubarb and Custard this pops into my head, so the title is a tribute to one of my favourite kids tv shows, not a spelling error!

A tale of two bakeries

My Love Bakery book arrived last Friday at work and the one cupcake my colleague and I drooled over the most was the rhubarb and custard cake. It sounded absolutely fabulous and was immediately added to must bake soon list.

So obviously I was mega-chuffed when I ventured to Love Bakery on the Saturday hungover (and alone as my other half was too hungover to leave the comfort of the duvet!) and spotted them on sale. As I was hungover and had previously been unable to keep food down that day I bought a box of four and pootled off down the Kings Road with them.

We didn't get round to eating the cupcakes till the Sunday as we both still felt a little under the weather on Saturday night, but the cakes did not suffer for it and still tasted incredibly moist and flavoursome. This always worries me about bakeries where I buy a cupcake and eat it the same day and its hard - when do they make them? Anyways back to Love. The rhubarb and custard has now been added to my favourite cupcakes of all time list - a lovely moist base with a rhubarb compote in the middle, and a custard frosting, with crumble on top. This is pure comfort food in a cupcake!

My second choice of cupcake was the banana toffee cupcake. This was a very tasty banana cake, topped with gorgeous caramel frosting - this cake was luscious. The only thing I didn't enjoy was the fondant bananas on top - I find them just too sweet but hey they looked gorgeous and the cupcake was to die for so who cares!

 Look at that frosting - you just wanna dive in!

Next up were Manny's cakes. I opted for the red velvet for him as his first choice. He loved the red velvet declaring it the best he's tried, apart from mine (he's too sweet sometimes!). It was a really moist, very red cake, but the cake wasn't marred by the flavour of food colouring, which can sometimes happen with red velvets.

Look at the colour of that! 

Finally was his double chocolate - always with the double chocolate. After the disappointment of the "valrohna triple chocolate" from Cox, Cookies and Cake he was very happy to have a chocolate cake that tasted of chocolate. Perhaps the Love Bakery ladies could teach Mr Lanlard and Cox how to make chocolate cakes?

The second bakery visited was an old favourite, Crumbs and Doilies. And alas it is a very different story than Love Bakery. If you check though my blog I have eaten a lot of cupcakes from Crumbs and Doilies in many flavours from lemon and poppyseed to Christmas flavour - all have been pretty and more importantly all have been tasty. Until recently that is. The last time we bought cakes from them was in April 2010 when we went to Partridges Market to get their flavour of the month, Mexican Chilli Chocolate. It was dry, disappointing and flavourless. Never one to judge a bakery on just one cake as they could be having an off day I decided to give them another go and this weekend seemed perfect as their flavour of the month was Mojito. I fell in love with Mojitos when we went to Madrid last month to see Manowar so these sounded right up my street. We had planned to get just two cakes but they were offering a box of four for a fiver (two were £4) so we opted for two mojito, a chocolate and a rose vanilla.

Then we went to the pub as it was cold and wet outside and we couldn't be bothered to shop.

The pub also explains why my pictures look like this

To be honest I didn't have much to work with.. These are the mojito cupcakes. These are billed as;

a winning combination of lime, mint and a little Havana Club rum. Awesome.

And that did sound awesome. Unfortunately they tasted of nothing. Ok there was the merest hint of lime but nothing else. No mint, and I certainly got no rum. The frosting was weird - I really don't know what it was - a mush with no flavour, except a tonne of sugar crystals on top. Incredibly disappointing. And  to top it all, incredibly dry.

Next, Manny's chocolate cupcake;

A rich chocolate sponge made with Valrhona cocoa, smothered with dark Callebaut chocolate buttercream

I didn't try this but he was bitterly disappointed - he said there was a minimum of chocolate flavour and he didn't believe this was Valrhona chocolate. Again it was dry and again flavourless.

Finally, my rose vanilla;

A light, fragrant cupcake made using organic Madagascan vanilla and naturally distilled organic Persian damask rosewater. Available with pink icing only.

This smelt funny and the smell overwhelmed me before I even took a bite. Like butter but not fresh. But I persevered (the things I do for my blog) and again it was utterly tasteless. There was no hint of vanilla, no rosewater nothing. I sniffed the cupcake trying desperately to get a hint of rose water - nothing. It didn't smell of anything at all. I'd at least expected a hint of vanilla. The cake was beyond dry and we were eating them the day we bought them. Things like this seriously worry me. When I bake I use nothing but the  best ingredients, and occasionally we eat cupcakes about 3 days after they're baked (you can't eat all the cupcakes at once can you!!) and they still taste MUCH fresher than these.

I don't know what's happened with Crumbs and Doilies - have they changed bakers, suppliers? Does anyone know. I'm bitterly disappointed. I've been recommending them to people for years but I'm afraid I won't be doing that any more.

Hummingbird Cupcakes new store details

I've just found out that the new Wardour Street branch of the fabulous Hummingbird Bakery is Lee Stafford's old Salon so I will be easily able to find it (used to get my hair cut there till they moved and upped their prices loads).

It's quite a little space - it did have a downstairs section as a salon, but I suppose they may use that as a kitchen? I can't wait to see what they've done to it - I know from their Twitter that their theme for the store is cupcake pop art! According to my sources it opens on the 9th December - I have a gig that night in Brixton but I'm hoping that my lovely hubby might leave work a bit early with me for a pre-gig cupcake :) Or maybe I should just take the day off and camp outside for the opening?

In other Hummingbird news Tarek will be at Heals in the Kings Road signing copies of the Hummingbird cookbook this Saturday from 1.30-3.30, and some cupcake demo's and a baking Q&A are promised. There are several cupcake outlets within walking distance of Heals if you want to make a cupcake day of it including Crumbs and Doilies, Love Bakery and Hummingbird - Buttercup is also less than 30mins walk away but after the last time I'd give it a miss. Oh and if you walk to Harrods you can have a Lola's cupcake or if you're all cupcake'd out a Laduree macaroon.

On a non-cupcake note - Paul A Young and Hope and Greenwood will also be signing their books at Heals on Saturday

Happy National Chocolate Cupcake day

And to think I didn't even have a cupcake this weekend...pah!

Thought I'd share some pics of chocolate cupcakes Manny's enjoyed over the years seeing as I tend not to have chocolate ones!

From top to bottom - my chocolate rolo cupcakes, Hummingbird's bling chocolate cupcake, Primroses chocolate cupcake, Love Bakery's glittery chocolate cupcake and finally a behemoth from Magnolia in NY :)

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!