London Town...and the best cupcakes around!

So a few weeks ago I had the chance to go down South for the weekend and I knew exactly what I wanted to do - a day of cupcaking in London with my sister! 

We had planned that we were going to visit a few new cupcakeries that have popped up in the past few months.  The plan was to meet at St.Pancras - I suggested we meet in front of Peyton & Byrne.  That was my first mistake! We were just meant to meet there and then head off to the respective cupcakeries...but as I sat waiting for my sister staring at these cupcakes piled sky high with frosting how could I resist! 

So when she turned up we decided we would pick one cupcake to share, and save it for later and be on our way.

Along the way we stopped off at the Kings Road to visit Partridges and buy some graham crackers.  Of course we just had to take a little stroll around their food market (which is one of our faves!) and when we saw that Crumbs and Doilies speciality flavour was buttered popcorn how could we resist!

This was one seriously amazing cupcake! I don't know how but the frosting managed to taste just like creamy buttery popcorn flavour and having actual popcorn on top was just ingenius - we loved everything about it and devoured it on the spot!

and then we stumbled upon another stall, whose name I didn't even manage to look at since I was mesmerised by these super fudgy raspberry and white choc chunk brownies!!

How could we say no! So we bought one and shared it on the tube as we headed on with the trip.  This was one of the best brownies I've had in a very long time - I must find out the name of the stall and hunt them down again...very soon!

It was getting close to lunchtime and of course we needed to eat some real food so we decided to head to the new Westfield at Stratford.  It opened the weekend after I left London last summer so I hadn't had the privilege of checking it out yet! and in my family we are big Westfield fans.  It certainly didn't disappoint and I think it's got some of the best food courts I have ever seen!

My sister suggested we get a pizza from Franco Manca because she had gone there before and loved it.  Now I am a pizza fan and I eat a lot of it at home, but when I got out for meals Mexican and American cuisine and sometimes Indian just always grab my attention.  Going out for a pizza would probably be at the bottom of my list...so I wasn't too thrilled by this idea but I decided to go with it and trust my sister - she usually has good foodie instincts! and oh my goodness this was definitely the best pizza I've eaten in the UK.  It is made with sourdough bread and you may notice it didn't have any toppings on, just cheese, but it didn't need any other toppings because it was so delicious as is - I can seriously recommend trying this delicious pizza.  It was a hit.

How can it not be when accompanied by a Root Beer float though - courtesy of Chicago Rib Shack!

You definitely don't get those kind of lunches in North Wales, I was loving it! 

After some shopping around, my sister told me we simply couldn't leave without getting a Pinkberry - because, shock horror, I haven't tried one yet! Again I'm not that much of a fan...when in London I would much rather stuff my face with cupcakes/brownies/cookies than with frozen yoghurt, but I went along with it anyway and oh my gosh it was amazing! I am a Pinkberry convert! Did you know they have the yummiest flavours - we got two swirled together...coconut frozen yoghurt and mango frozen yoghurt! How good does that sound, even just on it's own! and then we got it covered with shredded coconut, fresh strawberries, raspberries and mango! 

So by this point it was time to leave Westfield and head to the 2 cupcakeries we were meant to be checking out that day, but have you even just seen the amount of stuff we had eaten already! There was no way I was going to be handle 2 more cupcakes! So we decided to call it a done deal and leave those 2 cupcakeries for another day!

We headed back to St.Pancras and while we waited for my train we ate our Peyton and Byrne cupcake that we had carried around with us all day! We had opted for the toffee and banana, my sister is a huge banana fan! It was sooooo tasty.  You could see the fresh bits of banana actually swirled through the frosting and when cupcakes have a high ratio of frosting:cupcake that is just fine by me! I was loving it! It was a seriously tasty end to a seriously tasty day!

You know it's been a great day when the only photos you took were of food!

p.s can anyone else tell that I am still procrastinating my essay, ahh!

Final final Cupcaking days...for National Cupcake Week!

So I thought I was done with eating cupcakes...but it's National Cupcake Week and if you can't eat tons of cupcakes now then when can you! 

As it turns out I wasn't quite finished stuffing my face with London's cupcakes! A few weeks ago when I was up to my ears in red velvet baking fails I decided to pop by Love Bakery and see what they had to say on the matter.  The staff were very friendly and assured me as long as I bought artifical red colour and I used their recipe I would be fine.  Unfortunately Waitrose and Tesco had other plans for me...did you know they only stock natural food colouring these days. booo 

Needless to say it was another baking fail! but I'm pleased to say their Red Velvet was very delicious, if only we could all ship our snazzy red food colour in from Italy like they do! I also loved their cute little shop, it was well worth the very long walk all the way up the Kings Rd! 

A few days later I had a hair appointment on Chiswick High Rd, which I was rather excited about - not only because it meant I would soon be root free but because I knew I could stop off at Outsider Tart to pick up some of their delicious goodies! 

I was overjoyed to see coconut cupcakes on offer, with mounds of frosting and shredded coconut on top.  Coconut is possibly my favourite flavour ever! Unfortunately for me it was paired with my worst flavour ever - almond! I have a strange aversion to almond, I can't stand the taste of it and I can detect even the most minute amount in any baked item! so as soon as I picked up that hint of almond it was all downhill for me.  Sad times...but my sister who enjoys almond thought it was a great cupcake! 

Luckily for me they don't put almond in their peanut butter cheesecake brownies so I enjoyed them immensely  they were fudgy and rich and generally yummy! 

Has anyone seen the vast amounts of Streetcar ads popping up all over the tubes? One of them even has Crumbs and Doilies cupcakes in it! and if you snapped a picture of yourself with the ad they send you a vouched for a box of 12 mini cupcakes on the house!! 

Never one to turn down free cupcakes we joined in the fun! 

and this is me and my happy face picking them up on Saturday from their stall on Kings Rd! 

We had a variety of Salted Caramel, Vanilla, Chocolate, Red Velvet and their special of the month Lavender Caramel which I'm afraid to say I was too scared to try! Lavender has never been a flavour that I've wanted to eat, I believe it should be confined to candles and soaps! but the rest of the flavours were all delicious, and I love bite size cupcakes more than anything! 

After that we headed to the Mayor's festival down at the Thames.  There were quite a few cupcakes to be tried down there! We came across Ms Cupcake first.  A long time ago at an Iron Cupcake event i tried a strawberries and cream cupcake made by the lovely Ms Cupcake herself, it was amazing...even more amazing when I discovered the mounds of creamy and delicious frosting was indeed vegan! How she makes such tasty cupcakes and still manages for them to be vegan friendly I have no idea! She has since opened up her own cupcakery in Brixton which I haven't managed to get around to trying this summer sadly so I was excited when i saw her stall full of goodies! 

We went for the Ferrero Rocher because I love different flavours! It was very tasty and tasted just like a Ferrero Rocher! but for my tastebuds the chocolate was a little 'too' dark - I'm not a dark chocolate fan, but my sister enjoyed it.

We also saw Yummy Boutique's stall.  They were the main reason I headed to the festival, I had seen via their facebook they had been working on 20 new flavours! so I was very excited about that but from what I could see their flavours on offer were pretty standard and they didn't seem too new to me so we gave them a miss because there were other more exciting flavours at different stalls we wanted to try! 

Like Peggy's cupcakes.  Her stall was oh so pretty filled with gobstopper sized cake pops and beautifully frosted cupcakes in a whole array of flavours.  We went for the banana cupcake with caramel frosting.

I couldn't possibly eat it that very same due to the vast amounts of cupcakes we had already consumed but I'm happy to report 3 days later it was still moist and delicious! The banana and caramel pairing was a good choice...

which brings me onto the final cupcake! Lola's special of the month was cookie dough,  which is always a favourite in my book...so we just had to check it out.  Unfortunately when we went they only had the mini's left...and I was pretty disappointed to find no cookie dough inside my cupcake!! Apparently only the regular sized ones are lucky enough to be filled with dough! which I think is a bit of a letdown, I regularly make mini's and if I can fill mine they should be able to fill their's!

The cookie frosting was super tasty, but I felt the cookie on top should have been a soft homebaked one.  All in all not their best offering they've ever come up with.

So there you have it...my last London cupcake I will be eating for a very long time! so whilst you may not be seeing so many cupcake reviews on here in the next few months since I've told you previously Bangor is pretty much devoid of cupcakes, I will be back in my own house with my own kitchen and KitchenAid so I'm sure there will be lots more baking to make up for that! 

Also, drop by next week to see an awesome guest post from my sister about all the AMAZING cupcakeries they visited in California...you will be amazed!

Another fun cupcake hunt...

I went to London on Sat to visit my family...and we did what we do best - hunt for cupcakes!

The first stop was CC's cafe in Queen's Park which is just around the corner from where my sister lives. It had a really cool feel inside and I liked the way they baked everything right in front of you. I couldn't find a website for them but you can read a foodie review here. I ordered a chocolate cupcake decorated with an oreo on top. I was really impressed, the cake could have been slightly more moist but the frosting was delicious! It was so chocolately..and was somewhere in between ganache and buttercream! delish. Their selection of cupcakes are limited to vanilla or chocolate but they have lots of other yummy treats on offer like brownies and banana bread too.

After that we headed to the national wedding fair where my sister's company The English Cheesecake Company had a stall. As well as their delicious cheesecakes they had on show a cupcake cheesecake wedding tower!

I was pretty excited about seeing lots of cupcake stalls and trying samples! but it wasn't too fruitful, there were only 2 cupcake stalls there. They didn't have any samples and they wouldn't let me take photos ..boo! but I did find a random stall which was giving away free crumbs and doilies cupcakes which I was pretty excited about! so here I am with a lovely orchid tree and my mini cupcake!

We braved the traffic to make it to the new Hummingbird Bakery on Wardour St.

It was really snazzy inside and the decor was great. I was excited about the cakes because the Hummingbird Bakery was probably the first bakery I ever had a gourmet cupcake at! but that was about 6 years ago and I'm not sure I've had one since! so I had completely forgotten what they tasted like and they're so talked about that I was sure they were going to be amazing. However I ordered a red velvet and Mara had a chocolate malt and we ate half each. The red velvet cake was nice but the frosting wasn't great at all, it was far too sour and needed more sugar to get the right balance. The choc malt was just far too rich and I couldn't even finish it! so a rather disappointing end to our cupcake hunt. I have to say my CC's cupcake was far superior to the ones I tasted at Hummingbird!

Cupcake day of fun in London!! 10. Crumbs and Doilies

So ... yesterday was an awesome day! I went to London to meet my friend Laur who's just returned from her travels around South east Asia, and my friend Jade who's just leaving for a year in Singapore!! and while in London what else is there to do but eat cupcakes!! So I was eager to visit Crumbs and Doilies stand in Covent Garden...even more so when the night before I entered the photo of me with all my cupcake birthday goodies in their competition and I found out I'd won ...so I went to the stall to claim my free box of a dozen mini cupcakes!!! How exciting...the cakes were very yummy, and decorated beautifully with all different colour icing and sprinkles and I loved that they were so mini you could just pop them in your mouth...although perhaps that made it easy to not realise how many you were eating!!! but thanks to Crumbs and Doilies for making my 1st visit to them so fun! I hope they can open up a shop soon as I'm sure it would be an awesome one!

Where next?

I have been salivating for a while now at the crumbs and dollies website. I was doing some research on behalf of my sister Mel who gets married at the end of July. She is quite keen to do the cupcake thing too for the wedding and I came across c&d and was most impressed by their array of colours they can offer in icing and toppings etc, I spent a whole evening on their blog looking at every past order they've done! and they definitely seem to be the company who have impressed me most and I feel their prices are most reasonable too.
So now I am going to make sure that the next time I happen to go into London that a trip will have to be made via c&d to see if the taste lives up to the appearance!
Above are some of my favourite cakes they have created in the past. I wish I had taken a trip in Nov 2008 when Oreo's were their speciality of the month cake!