Who you callin' cupcake?

I just pre-ordered Who You Callin' Cupcake by Michelle and Valentin Garcia of Bleeding Heart Bakery from Amazon and I'm already excited about baking some of their awesome creations! One day I will visit my awesome chum Renee (who I miss LOADS!) in Chicago and eat lots of cupcakes with her there!

If you want to see just how awesome Bleeding Heart are check out their Flickr account, to see more like the gorgeous valentines one above!

Thanks to Bleeding Heart and Chibill for use of the gorgeous photographs.

6 more weeks of winter..time for a cupcake!

A post on Serious Eats reminded me that its Groundhog Day today so I thought I' d continue my tradition of posting some cute pics of Groundhog cupcakes to celebrate!

So in order from top to bottom; Punxsutawney Phil's prediction (more Winter...boo), the cutest little groundhog from A Baked Creation, a sweet little creation from Dozen Flours and finally lots of the little blighters from Philly Cupcake via Philadelphia City Paper.

Thanks to everyone for use of their photos!

Don't stop me now...

So I went a month without a cupcake..and then I ate two in one day. I was on holiday, my diet was already out the window after eating at Wahaca and Byron over the first couple of days of my holidays so what was the point of resisting the call of the new(ish) Hummingbird store in Wardour Street?

The new store is really cute (as usual), lots of pop art pics of cupcakes, with a few seats and really friendly helpful staff. It was a bit odd being back there as the store used to be my hairdressers and it was a bit strange seeing it in a different light - its certainly more welcoming than my hairdressers used to be, or maybe that's just because I have a phobia about hairdressers.

They didn't have any pink frosted vanilla cupcakes so I opted for one of their hand frosted vanilla creations, with gorgeous lilac frosting covered in glitter with a very pretty edible flower on top. Manny pondered for a few minutes, deciding between red velvet, double chocolate and black bottom - well if I'm honest he badgered me for a few minutes to see if I'd buy him two but I was trying to be good, so he decided upon the black bottom (Decadent, dark and dense chocolate sponge baked with a cheesecake centre, and frosted with cream cheese frosting) which is one of his favourite Hummingbird cupcakes. (I must make these from the Hummingbird Cookbook for him at some point).

I've said it before, but I'll repeat myself again - Hummingbird really do make some of the tastiest cupcakes around - I know some people think they're overly frosted (pah) but I think they are just divine - soft flavoursome base and frosting that oozes yummy-ness onto your tongue with every mouthful. There's little else to add, except to say if you've not had one, go try one - and if you're feeling really indulgent and they have them, grab a whoopie pie too - we had one a few months back and they're nearly as good as the cupcakes!

Finally, the store sells some of the Hummingbird merchandise I've mentioned on here previously.

Eating cupcakes for Charity

I didn't eat a single cupcake for a whole month! Yes that's right from the 25th of December till the 25th of Jan I was cupcake-free! So after some thought I decided to end my cupcake-fast at Lola's cafe in Selfridges (somewhere I've been meaning to visit for ages!) with a couple of their charity cupcakes.

I previously blogged about Lola's Kiss it Better cupcake, and Manny had expressed an interest in their Hazelnut Vanilla cupcake after I mentioned it on here. Since blogging about it, Lola's had announced that 100% of the retail price from their nutella cupcake was going to survivors of the Haiti earthquake - so we were not only stuffing ourselves but doing our bit for charity too.

The cafe is very small, with only enough seats for about a dozen or so people, and as its in Selfridges and looks rather inviting, its difficult to get a seat. This was my 3rd try at a sit down cupcake experience in Selfridges and we got lucky - grabbing a table being used by a member of staff, who kindly took her laptop elsewhere :)

We ordered our cupcakes and a cappuccino for me, mocha (with whipped cream) for tubby Manny. Firstly the coffee, provided by Vida e Caffe is amazing, some of the best I've tried - really flavoursome and well made, and they came with a little square of Lindt dark chocolate which made Manny even happier as he now had something to dunk in his whipped cream. I had seen him eyeing my flake and was guarding it from him.

So, the cupcakes. Last time I tried Lola's Christmas cupcakes I was a little over-whelmed by the amount of food colouring and a lacking of vanilla flavour, however there were no issues with these, they were wonderful. The base of mine was soft and flavoursome and the frosting was very tasty indeed. The smarties and flake worked really well - and I loved the fact that it was designed by a 4 year old - it looked and tasted like something a 4 year old would love! Having said that the 37 year old me loved it too, but then I'm a child at heart, especially when it comes to food! Manny's nutella frosting was fantastic (I took a little smidgen to try it). Oh and as well as the lovely cakes, you get proper mini-cutlery to eat your cupcake with, which is ideal as sometimes wooden forks impair the taste of your cupcake!

I'm not sure if you can still get these cupcakes in Lola's as tomorrow is February but I urge you to pop along and see - the money is going to good causes, and the cakes are definitely worth trying.

Love makes the world go round

How cute are all these Valentines cupcakes from The Gourmet Cupcake Company? I don't think anyone would be disappointed to receive a box of these on Valentines day! The lovely "will you marry me" ones in the top pic can be customised to say anything you require and the heart ones are available in your choice of flavour and colour, although I personally like the black hearts as they're rather anti-soppy while still being romantic!

As well as offering a rather fabulous array of valentines cupcakes, The Gourmet Cupcake Co offer a couple of gift ideas for all you cupcake lovers out there.

First up are their cupcake kits, which feature everything you need to get started on cupcake baking for yourself, and include 50 of their gorgeous cupcake cases- you can find out more about the kits, and order, here. They also offer cupcake decorating classes costing £75 for weekdays (£95 weekends) which includes all materials, lunch and a dozen cupcakes to take home - lasting approx 6 hours this is the best value cupcake class I've come across online. They are also due to start classes in level two cupcake decorating soon, where you learn advance icing and decorating skills, further info on both levels of classes available here.

Finally, back to the Valentines selection - for every box they sell during Valentines week (8-14 Feb) they will donate £3 to Bliss' Cake a Difference appeal.

Photographs used with thanks to Gourmet Cupcake Company.

Bea-utiful cupcakes for your Valentine

Bea's of Bloomsbury always produce some of the prettiest, and tastiest, cupcakes and fortunately their selection for Valentines doesn't disappoint! I love them all, and I'm sure anyone would be happy to receive them as a Valentines gift.

Available in boxes of 6 for £13 or 12 for £25 or as part of their fabulous sounding Love Box with lots of other goodies, including chocolate brownie hearts, further details of which can be found on their site. I know someone that will love a brownie heart so I'll have to pop in pre-valentines to grab a couple.

As much as I like the look of the Valentines selection, I am personally hoping someone will pop in and get me one of their Chinese New Year selection featuring my favourite animal of all time - the panda!!! I don't think I've seen a prettier cupcake ever! MUST get one.

Finally, Bea's are currently running a Cupcakes against Malaria campaign - if you buy 6 cupcakes they send a malaria net to the survivors of the Haiti earthquake. You can read about it on Bea's website and at Againstmalaria.com.

Thanks to Bea's for use of the photographs

Butch it up, Buttercup

This weeks Time Out New York has an article on where to buy 167 different flavours of cupcakes in the City, and highlights 3 cupcake bakers who offer out-there flavour choices for NYC's cupcake lovers, two of which I'd not heard of before; Butch Bakery and Robicellis.

I couldn't resist using the tagline from Butch Bakery's website as this post's title - it sums up their manifesto rather well I'd say:

Our objective is simple. We're men, men who like cupcakes. Not the frilly pink frosted sprinkles and unicorns kind of cupcakes. We make manly cupcakes. For manly men.

Their cupcakes come in 12 flavours, all of which are booze soaked in some way and you can chose which pattern you'd like on top, including the very manly camouflage. These are available via mail order in New York only at the moment - they'd make a perfect manly gift for the man in your life I'd say (although my man doesn't object to frilly pink frosted sprinkles cupcakes!)

Robicelli's seem to be a typical cupcake company when you look at their Facebook page (their website is currently being redesigned), with yummy looking tiramisu (bottom pic), chocolate peanut butter and dulce de leche, however you soon run into their Elvis cupcake - banana base, with peanut butter frosting topped with brown sugar glazed bacon. These are the cupcakes that were meant to be sold deep fried at the Park Slope Chip Shop, in Brooklyn, leading to blogger/online media frenzy labelled cupcakegate. They also do a Harry Potter inspired Butterbeer flavour with butterscotch and sprinkled with edible gold dust (hope Warner Bros have given their approval!) and a vanilla waffle cake topped with maple syrup dipped buttermilk fried chicken. A fried chicken cupcake - not sure about that but next time we go to New York I might have to pop in and sample one just to say I have!

You can access the map featuring all the places to buy different flavoured cupcakes in NY here, and the artist who created the gorgeous word cloud of cupcake flavours' site here. I want a print of this for my cupcake kitchen - it's gorgeous!

If you want to read about the cupcakes we tried while in New York last year you can type New York into the search function or check out posts from March 09 (and maybe a couple in April) as that's when we visited and ate quite a few cupcakes :)

Thanks to Kurt M Crobert (wordcloud), Time Out (map), Butch Bakery(3rd pic down) and Robicellis (bottom pic) for use of the photos.