A Review and A Rant

I've been lucky enough to visit two new bakeries in the last few weeks and Lola's Kitchen and the Outsider Tart both sell cupcakes, while Lola's is dedicated to them Outsider do a variety of other treats including Whoopie Pies.

Lola's make incredibly picture perfect cupcakes, impeccably decorated in a variety of different colours, thier whole set up reminds me a lot of Sprinkles in California. I had a red velvet and got a pink frosted vanilla cupcake for a friends' birthday, which she loved. I have mixed feelings about Lola's, loved the taste of the frosting but there wasn't enough of it to keep the relative dry cake moist. Lola's is a polished business, as are thier cakes, and there is something I've learned, there is no such thing as the perfect cake.

Outside Tart is in Chiwick and is perfect for the jet-set Chiwick crowd who can afford to spend £8.50 on some chocolate chips. They sell a small variety of cupcakes along with other traditional American sweet treats. I'd read a lot about them in the press over the last few weeks, raving about thier Whoopie Pies in particular so I took my friend along for the short drive town to Chiswick. The Outsider Tart store is lined with chunky wooden shelves filled with American groceries starting to be more widely available in London and a bar that runs down the middle of the small shop displaying thier cakes. I had a Vanilla Whoopie Pie and my friend had a chocolate peanut butter cupcake. The Whoopie Pie was enourmous, I didn't know where to start eating it! And while normally a huge piece of cake is welcomed the pie was incredibly dry and filled with synthetic tasting frosting. My friend couldn't finish her cupcake either, the chocolate frosting also tasted pretty synthetic and the peanut butter cake was dry and didn't taste as nutty as we'd have liked. All in all we both wished we hadn't taken the trouble to drive over to Chiswick in the pouring rain to try them.

 

I discovered a brilliant baking supply website today called Layer Cake Shop it has sprinkled in every colour you could want, its really Kistchy and fun, its basically the the baking supply shop I've always dreamed of stumbling across!

Now for the rant.

I am always humbled and grateful for how supportive my friends are about the things I want to do, whether its taking thier time out to come and help me frost cupcakes until 1am or agreeing to my mad ideas of having a cupcake themed photoshoot I am inundated by friends who want to help, or want to find ways to help me. And there is always one who hasn't got a single nice thing to say, who says and thinks you'll fail before you've even begun, who belittle's your every idea and never offers to help.

Halloween

This is what happens when you make cupcakes on Halloween, then drink 3 bottles of wine. Harriet sporting some fetching horns whilst consuming a vanilla cupcake :)

The photoshoot lowdown...

So its almost 8am on a Sunday morning and I cn't sleep s I thought I'd finally, finally write about the photoshoot I did with JamPhotos last weekend!

I had no idea how many people were going to come because we'd told everyone that it was an open invitation and they were free to bring thier friends, I aso didn't know how many cupcakes people would want for thier shoot so I made alot. Understatement.

48 vanilla

48 chocolate

24 red velvet

12 peanut butter

12 vegan chocolate

Making the cake wasn't stressful at all, they were made in 5 batches throughout the morning with the help of my wonderful Mum. The stressful part was frosting them all. Firstly because no matter what I did I couldn't get the frosting right on Saturday evening and I'm not 100% happy with the way they turned out.

Some of them looked amazing, the Red Velvet and Peanut butter worked really well but just the regular vanilla and chocolate looked a little melted which I was really disappointed about, cupcakes are the one things in my chaotic life that I can usually get right.

Anyway, with the help of my two best friends Harriet and Omar I got them all frosted and we headed to the photoshoot early Sunday afternoon. Some of the cupcakes were totally demolished on the drive there, which I was horrified about but we made it there relatively unscathed. Thankfully.

The photoshoot went really well, and even though I was terrified my gloopy looking cupcakes wouldn't be well received and everyone seemed to really like them.

More photos from the day to come :)

The Photoshoot...

Baking, baking, baking

Its now 8 days until the "Glamour Cupcakes" photoshoot, and I'm a bit all over the place about what I'm making because I don't really know how many people are actually going to turn up. So either we won't have enough or everyone's going to be taking some home with them. Who knows.

I've been given my own cupboard in the kitchen (how gracious of my parents) because apparently all my baking stuff is taking over the kitchen.

I don't really know what they could possibly mean. Hmm.

Whole Foods...

And the award for the most ostentatious but prettiest cupcake goes to Whole Foods. I don't know how it tastes because I'm scared to ruin such a lovely cake. A lot of work for a £2.59 cake.

Cupcakery goodness.

Laura Webster who is gorgeous and wonderful is currently working on making my blog look insanely awesome. Can't wait to see it. While I am working on what to make for the Jam Photos "Glamour cupcakes" shoot in a few weeks time. I am still feeling a bit vague on how many cupcakes I'll need and much research must be made into vegan and dairy free cupcakes as at least one person coming is lactose intolerant. This is a wonderful challenge for me as I've never made anything to cater to a vegan/dairy free diet before.

I am also thinking of buying a new laptop some time soon because my computer is gett old and I've started to find its slowness really frustrating. If I get a laptop then I can keep using my desktop as a giant hard drive etc. Hmm. I am attached to my desk top.

I have started a Google map that show all the places in London to find a decent cupcake, in my opinion. Check it out.


View London's Cupcakes in a larger map

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Autumn is definitely in the air at he moment, Halloween is just around the corner and before you know it London skies will be filled with fireworks. Farmers market stalls were filled with different squash in various colours and sizes this weekend - so in the spirit of the new season I bring you... Pumpkin-spice Cupcakes (with vanilla mascapone frosting)....


Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Makes 24 cupcakes

260g Self Raising Flour
280g Golden Caster Sugar
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
3tsp Ground Cinnamon + 1/2 tsp for decoration
80g Unsalted Butter - at room temperature
220ml milk
4 eggs (small)
425g tin of Pumpkin Puree
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg for decoration

This recipe is adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery pumpkin cupcake recipe. I've essentially doubled up on the recipe in order to make use of a whole can of pumpkin puree and changed the quantities of some of the ingrediants etc as I went along.

1. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl, add sugar, salt, cinnamon, baking powder and butter until well mixed and sand like.
2. Add the milk gradually until all mixed in. Add the eggs in two at a time and mix on a slow speed until all mixture is included.
3. Mix the pumpkin puree into the cake mixture with spatula until smooth  - and bright orange!
4. I used an ice cream scoop to evenly distribute the mixture into 24 muffin cases - cooked in a preheated oven at 180degrees for roughly 20 minutes. 

 Vanilla Mascarpone Frosting

500g Mascarpone Cheese
300ml Whipping/Double Cream
1cup Icing Sugar
1 tsp good quality Vanilla Essensce.

Add all incrediants to mixing bowl and mix by hand to incorporate the icing sugar - do not do as I did and turn on the electric mixer - you will have have a white kitchen! Mix for 2-3 minutes until all incorporated and thickened.

I refrigerated the frosting until the cupcakes were cooled.

I randomly sprinkled cinnamon and nutmeg on top of each of the cupcakes.

Voila!

The cake was really doughy despite being left in for the correct time, I don't know if this was just as a result of the vegetable? I've never made pumpkin cake before. Hmm. The frosting was fantastic, really light and not at all sickly, great stuff.