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!

Final cupcaking days in London Town!

My London days are coming to an end all too soon so I've been cramming in as many cupcakes as possible! We checked out quite a few on our anniversary staycation last weekend. I stumbled across Mimi's Cupcakes in Camden market.  She's situated in this cute little hut that is filled to the brim with cupcakes! There was a massive variety of flavours which I always love to see and they weren't just the boring old regular ones either! I went with a mint chocolate aero bubble which was pretty yummy! I would have liked to have tried more but had just eaten two enormous tacos from a Mexican food stall! 

On a rare sunny afternoon we found ourselves down at the Southbank...okay I had planned to be there especially because they were having a village fete and I heard cupcakes were going to be involved! I'm always a bit worried when I hear about things vaguely that I could turn up and be presented with a really lame stall of the kind of cupcakes that mums produce at summer fetes so I was very pleasantly surprised to find this stall from The Riff Raff Cake Co. It was bursting at the seams with cupcakes! and yet again there were some great flavour combos.

I went for a chocolate and coconut and a banana and marshmallow! These were cupcakes as they should be...moist, flavoursome and delicious! 

After that, we headed to the Outsider Tart stall because it would be criminal to be down at the South Bank without picking up some treats from my favourite bakery! We got the most amazing white chocolate chip fudge brownie spiced with cinnamon! and what made it even better...

was eating it with scoops of this toasted coconut ice cream from Sorbitium Ices! It was an insanely good combo.

For weeks I've been wanting to visit Netil Market after reading rave reviews about Lucky Chip burgers and of course seeing that Molly Bakes cupcakes has a stall there too.  So on my only potential lie in day for weeks I woke up at 8am to head there, it take me one underground, two buses and wouldn't you know Lucky Chip hadn't even opened their stand by the time I had to leave the market and head on back to Milton Keynes.  To say I was annoyed would be an understatement.  

Luckily Molly Bakes decided to turn up! and so all was not lost!

All her cupcakes looked so delicious it was very hard to pick! 

So we decided to go for 4! to make our trek to London fields worth it! Molly Bakes knows how to make good cakes that's for sure.  The Lime & Coconut I had was the best ever! and the popcorn brownie was inventive and delish! The choc cupcakes was oh so moist and the little mini frangipani was too cute! 

We ended our anniversary weekend with an awesome trip to Everyman cinemas in Hampstead.  Have you ever seen a cinema that sells cupcakes??! no me neither! So I just had to take a picture!

We got to take the cupcake into the cinema and enjoy it on our amazing sofa while we watched One Day.  The film was a disappointment, but our comfy sofa and cupcake certainly weren't! 

Phew! That was a whole lot of eating! but there's a bleak cupcake future ahead of me in Bangor so I have to make the most of it while I can! 

Some tasty treats from Outsider Tart

Last week some root beer was called for (for something you will get to see in my next blog post!) and so I could think of no better place than to go and get my fix than at Outsider Tart...because obviously I could buy ridunculous amounts of yummy treats to go with it!

When we got there I was delighted to find sooooo many goodies on display, it cemented the fact that it really is my favourite London bakery.  There had to be at least 5 different brownies on offer alone! This treat caught my eye because of the lucky charms hidden inside...which are a fave of mine! It was a yummy marshmallow krispy treat, and it was huge...just check out the size of it! It certainly wasn't for the faint hearted and I could feel the sugar destroying my teeth as I devoured it, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in my book!

Next up was the Snickers blondie, which was just amazing! Snickers is one of my favourite treats when you turn it into a baked delight and this blondie was packed full with choc, caramel and peanutty goodness!

I finally tried an Outsider Tart cupcake...and it was so good!! As if you couldn't tell by that delicious layer on top it was a lemon meringue, filled with a lovely lemon curd type filling....

and to finish, this was Mara's choice, and I can't exactly remember what they said it was but it was like a mini muffin covered in cinnamon and sugar and it really reminded me of a Churro so I was loving it!

All in all, it was a really good call to spend one of our evenings trekking out to Chiswick High Rd! and the icing on the cupcake was being able to have an ice cold glass of root beer when we got home!

An Outsider Tart Cooking Class...and a Giveaway Winner!

On Saturday we spent an amazing morning at Divertmenti Cookery School in Marylebone with none other than David and David, the owners of Outsider Tart Bakery on Chiswick High Rd.

You may recall I visited them once on one of my cupcake hunts, and whilst I didn't try one of their cupcakes I did try lots of their other baked goods which were all delicious! and after many of the mediocre cupcake bakeries I have visited recently in London I have decided Outsider Tart has to be up there as one of my favourite London bakeries so I feel pretty sad I've only visited them the once! Chiswick is pretty far out from us, I know it's a poor excuse, especially since I'm living in London now so I have made it a goal to visit them very very soon...if not just to experience one of their Thursday night cookie bar's! 

Let me introduce you to David no 1, David Muniz...this picture, and awesome facial expression just about sums him up completely! He is completely passionate about baking and his enthusiasm just shines through, as does his sense of humour! There was a number of lovely little anecdotes to do with their personalities and baking styles and the way they balance chores at home! David likes to be a little less accurate than most with his following of recipes and he tends to deviate alot, like deciding to make the Kunegunda cake with strawberries and raspberries rather than apple which is what was stated on our recipe file! and he likes to throw caution to the wind and walk on the baking wild side by breaking his eggs straight into the mixing bowl (rather than into a seperate bowl first incase of any accidents!) all the while instructing us to do the opposite.  Yes, he may not practice what he preaches but since he's the pro and I'm the ammateur I'm inclined to follow his example nonetheless!

That brings me onto David no.2, David Lesniak - an altogether more serious character with a more dry witted sense of humour than David no.1 but the Davids' contrasting personalities set them up perfectly as a little comedy duo! He doesn't seem to appreciate the big messes David no.1 creates in the kitchen at home as he is always the one who has to clean them up! and he is rather obsessive about things being orderly...even to the point of having to methodically measure out the portions in the tray bakes they make for their bakery to ensure every slice is of equal size!

We were taken through 3 recipes with them in the 2 hour slot that we were there for.  All of the recipes come from their book, Baked in America, which is due for release on August 4th but we've already pre ordered our copy from Amazon because we're just that eager! (and you get a great discount on the price!) We got given copies of the recipes to take home so I will definitely be sharing some of them with you over the next few weeks (we already whipped up a batch of those delicious looking cookies above last night but we ate them so fast that no pictures were taken!) and we got to browse through a copy of the book which only cemented our excitement for the book because everything in it sounds and looks so tasty!

I love the story that accompanies these cookies! At Outsider Tart they are known as XXX rated chocolate chip cookies, but they hail from a cookie the Davids fell in love with when they lived in New York.  There was a bakery right across the street from them that sold cookies called 'Chubby Hubbies' - don't you just love the name! and they were David no.1's favourite treat.  When they moved to England and wanted to start up their bakery they got in touch with Mary, the Cuban lady who had owned the bakery, and they found out it had closed down and she had gone down a completely different career path.  So they asked whether she might like to share her recipe, but they were met with a resounding no, so they set to try and recreate the chubby hubbies the best they could. 

They told us their version comes close, but they have never been able to successfully incorporate the mini marshmallows that were in the original cookie so it's not quite perfect yet, although after sampling some bite size versions we thought it tasted pretty delicious to us! and we even got to try some of the gooey melty ones that were fresh out of the oven! as did David no.1, sneakily shovelling in mouthfuls of the cookie behind David no.2's back - it was quite amusing to watch and I wish I had caught it on camera!

The next recipe they showcased was called 'Kunegunda's cake'.  We had been wondering for weeks leading up to the class what would be in this cake! We had even tried googling it and were rather confused when we couldn't find out any information! but we've since found out Kunegunda was in fact the name of David no.2's grandma so that would explain why google was of no help to us!

The 'cake' infact starts life as a pie because you begin by making dough, yet somewhere in between the baking stages it turns cake like and so it's a very intriguing dessert indeed! It can be made with any kind of fruit you desire! The one we sampled on the day was made with strawberries and raspberries which paired perfectly with the lovely summer's day it was, the original recipe calls for apples, and David and David gave many more recommendations of combos like strawberry & lemon, mango & blueberry or raspberry and peach...all tasty alternatives.

David and David have alot of baking wisdom between the two of them and I picked up alot of tips on the day that I furiously scribbled down on my recipe file.  One of the things they said that I liked the most was that their book, and recipes in it, are not concrete and you don't have to follow them exactly - in fact they want you to experiment and add your own touches to each recipe.  Alot of the baking they do comes down to how they feel on the day, and to do with what feels right when you are baking, use your intuition to help you create the yummiest treat possible, and it's all down to personal preference.

The treat we ended the day with, and indeed the treat we began with (because it took quite a long time to make!) was the rather lovely looking crowd pleaser: The Apple Stack Cake.

This is definitely a special occasion cake.  It's not something you can just whip up in one evening and it can, and should, be made over the course of several days because by assembling the cake the day before you give the apple filling time to really soak into the cake.

Here they are dishing us up a very generous slice of the cake to take on our way as we left! I was sad that the time flew by so quickly but glad that I was able to attend and went away armed with new tips and baking enthusiasm...and anticipation of their books arrival!

I'll leave you with a few of the Davids' top tips:

1. Melt your chocolate in a saucepan...straight on the hob! (yes, despite getting many looks of horror coming his way from the French men at Valrhona it is the way that David no.1 always does it) it is quicker and if you melt your butter first and then add the chocolate the butter acts as a protective layer so your chocolate won't burn.  Also, leave a few morsels of chocolate unmelted and then once you take your pan off the heat they will melt into your mix anyway.

2. Use the paddle of your KitchenAid to scrape down the sides of your bowl, this process also ensures any unmixed flour/sugar that is stuck to the paddle will be dislodged in the process...and it creates less washing up than using a separate spatulat (which pleases David no.2 greatly!)

3. When it comes to chocolate only the best will do - Valrhona all the way.  When it comes to Salt - go Kosher, it distributes better through your cake than regular table salt which can sometimes sink to the bottom. 

4. Don't ever prick your cakes in the middle with a cake tester/knife to see if they're done.  It scars their surface! and a simple old fashioned prod with two of your fingers will do the same job, if the cake bounces back then it's done and there's been no stabbing involved!

and before I forget! the winner of my cheesecake giveaway was...

Comment no. 10 - The More Than Occasional Baker!

Your wish of receiving a salted caramel cheesecake has come true, just let me know your email address so I can contact you to arrange delivery! Thanks to all who entered.

A more successful cupcake hunt!

I thought I'd catch up on a cupcake hunt I went on a few weeks ago but never got around to blogging!
You may recall our New Year's Day cupcake hunt was less than successful, due to half the cupcakeries we visited being shut! 
We decided we'd give The Cupcake Company (in Kensington) another go this time around, and we're very glad we did!

Excuse the poor quality photos...blogger's worst nightmare - my camera battery died! Here are the cupcakes we sampled, a white chocolate and raspberry one and a banana cupcake with toffee frosting and a rolo on top! 

These were some seriously good cupcakes! Super moist and fresh and just generally delicious.  I would pick cupcakes from somewhere like this any day over Hummingbird's cupcakes that's for sure.  Here is their lovely window display.

After that we headed to Chiswick to pay Outsider Tart a visit.  I was pretty excited about their cupcakes after looking on their website and seeing their amazing flavour selection! However when we arrived, they only had two different cupcakes on offer and neither looked anything special and I think it was just chocolate or vanilla so that was slightly disappointing.  I didn't feel tempted at all to try one, but I was definitely tempted by their other delicious looking treats so all was not lost!

They had 3 different types of brownie/blondie on offer:

So we took one of the triple chocolate brownies, one whoopie pie (chocolate with nutella filling) and a lemon bar to sample.

The brownie was very rich and I would have enjoyed it a little more if it had been accompanied by some ice cream I think! but the whoopie pie was yummy and the lemon bar was amazing! I think this was our fave treat we picked up, it had a crunchy top and delicious homemade lemon curd inside and left you wanting more! 

So whilst I wasn't blown away by their cupcakes, I would certainly recommend paying them a visit for the other delicacies on offer.....and for their amazing selection of imported products from America! This was an added bonus, I had no idea they sold root beer, lucky charms etc... so you can imagine my excitement when I found this giant bottle of root beer! 

I took one for the team and carried it around all day long! it was pretty heavy, but definitely worth it! 

Later on in the day we went to Portobello Market and found this amazing bookshop! If you're into cooking/baking you defo need to check it out...I could have stayed there for hours browsing all the amazing recipe books!

We also made sure we checked out Snog, a new frozen yoghurt place in Covent Garden.  It was quite cool (no pun intended!) inside and our raspberry and brownie frozen yoghurt as the perfect way to end our weekend full of treats!