A week of birthday cupcakes and a GIVEAWAY!!

Apologies for the lack of blogging, this past week has been crazy busy! with 3 different birthday celebrations, a night of Kings of Leon and a night and day at Wimbledon! but I'm ready now to share all the yummy cupcakes I have been indulging in this week...and because it was my birthday and I'm feeling generous I want to give you all the chance to win something delicious! but first...back to the cupcakes.

Last weekend my parents came to celebrate mine and my sister's birthday.  None of my birthday celebrations are complete without cupcakes, like the ones we tried last year at Queenie's in Shropshire, so we headed to Bake-a-Boo which is just down the road from us in West Hampstead that we hadn't got around to trying until now

It's a cute little tearoom where you can sit in and enjoy their baked goods, and there's also lots of fun cupcake paraphernalia to purchase too. We were there quite early in the morning, I was disappointed they only had 2 proper cupcakes on offer: lemon or white chocolate and raspberry - they were both gluten and dairy free which I wasn't too thrilled about but they were surprisingly tasty nonetheless! If you want to check out the other fun we had in London for my 'pre-birthday' celebrations you can see all the pics here

On Monday, I found myself in Westbourne Grove...which is fast becoming a favourite area of mine! with so many delicious eateries how can it not be! Ottelenghi's, Melt chocolates and this time I discovered Tom's Deli.  It is owned by the same people who own Crazy Homies and Lucky 7 - both awesome restaurants that I checked out on my other blog here  and so I knew I was going to love it! It sells tons of yummy American treats inside and has platters full of delicious looking treats.  They told me their cupcakes are brought in daily from a nearby bakery - from the looks of it, they may come from The Cupcake Company but I can't be sure.  I picked a raspberry and white chocolate which was very yummy but I would have preferred more frosting:cake ratio! The brownie was outstanding! it was so fudgy and moist, and it was filled with raspberries - bonus! I will definitely be going back to this cute little deli.

On Tuesday evening, my husband came to town and we had an amazing birthday meal at Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge.  When we got home I was greeted by these amazing Wimbledon themed cupcakes from Lola's! and had happy birthday sung to me!  

I was SO surprised to see this little pic of Andy Roddick sitting on top of my cupcake! The actual one you buy from Lola's comes with Andy Murray's face on but I'm defo not a fan so my sister promptly replaced it with my fave State side player! 

Also in the box was two strawberry and cream cupcakes, and this awesome vanilla cupcake decorated like a tennis ball!! Lola's redeemed themselves this time around, and I enjoyed the cupcakes much more than the last one I ate from them.

Wednesday was my actual birthday! so more cupcakes were in order! After an amazing birthday meal at Navajo Joe in Covent Garden, which I just cant recommend highly enough, we popped around the corner to The Primrose Bakery.

It's been a long time since I've eaten one of their cupcakes and I had a feeling they might have a fun flavour, different from the boring combo's you usually get, and I was right.  We picked up a chocolate cupcake with marshmallow frosting and a giant marshmallow on top! I loved the pink glitter on top, and the cupcake tasted great! I love the atmosphere inside their little shop too and it was a good place to give our feet a little break for a while! 

The cupcakes I had chosen specifically to try were 'cat and the cream' cupcakes.  I always like to find cupcakes I've never had before and so I looked on their website and saw they sold them at Whole Foods.  I wondered why I had never come across them before since Whole Foods is one of my very favourite shops to frequent! I found out that they don't do them at the main store, only the smaller ones.  So after a while of getting lost in Soho, we finally came across the small branch and I was eager to find the cupcakes! I looked all over and there wasn't a cupcake in sight, finally I asked a shop assistant who told me they were in the fridge - ugh!! I was not impressed, you never keep cupcakes in the fridge!! So since it had taken me so long to find the place I decided to give them a try anyway and hope for the best.  They have lots of interesting and different flavour combos so we opted for the chocolate cupcake with mint ganache filled topped with a raspberry buttercream! 

I walked around with it for a while to get it back up to temperature before eating it.  By the time I had reached Hyde Park where we were seeing Kings of Leon it was just about ready to eat, I had to smuggle it in under my cardigan as I was worried they were going to confiscate it from me at the entrance to the gig! It was a pretty large cupcake and not the best thing to eat in a field full of people, I got frosting on my nose and cheeks several times and ended up a complete mess by the end of it! The cupcake and frosting were soo good and I was really enjoying it until I hit that ganache in the middle..it was actually made with fresh mint leaves chopped up and for me it just didn't work.  The flavour was far too strong, I was expecting it to be more along the lines of a mint extract or something like that so unfortunately I felt the mint ruined the overall cupcake for me, but it was still fun to try something new!

So that was my cupcake filled week of birthday fun! 

Now on to the giveaway! 

As you all know I recently started working at The English Cheesecake Company and for too long now I've enjoyed their delicious cheesecakes all to myself and I feel it's time for one of you to enjoy them also!! So I am giving away one of their cheesecakes! for your tastebuds to try! 

I don't like to exlcude my fellow bloggers who don't live in England but our cheesecakes have to be sent out frozen and by the time they arrived to you in America or Australia they would be a soggy melted inedible mess! so that really wouldn't work! but what I will say is that if you have friends or family who live in England who you would like to send a cheesecake to then feel free to enter! but please don't enter if you are expecting it to be sent to you because it's just not going to work!! 

How to enter:

1. You need to follow my blog, then check out the English Cheesecake Company's website or my recommendations below and leave a comment on this blog post telling me what flavour cheesecake you would like the most! 

2. If you want a double entry you can also start following me on twitter here and just be sure to write another comment saying that you are doing so.

3. Sit back and cross your fingers that some scrummy cheesecake will be heading your way soon!!

It's really that easy! You have a week to enter and I will choose a winner at random next Sunday, 3rd July, at 8pm!

Here's a few of our newest additions...

and a few of my personal favourites...

and for those of you out there who aren't cheesecake fans we do some delicious chocolate fudge cakes...

Good luck!