Christmas cupcakes (a tad late)

Reader! Here it is! The long awaited Christmas edition of mine and SJ's cake exploits blog! This time, we focused on finding the most Christmassy cakes from some of the shops we've tried in the past to see if they should go on our crimble list or be chucked out with the leftover sprouts. By the end of the day, we were so cupcaked out we had to go eat enormous amounts of salt, just to get some semblance of balance back in our poor hyperactive bodies. But the results were seriously mixed! Some of our best scorers let us down, and a new entry rocked the boat! So lets crack on with...

ASH & SJ's FESTIVE CAKE BLOG

HUMMINGBIRD

It was a cold and windswept day when we rolled up in central London, wearing so many layers we looked slightly like Verucca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, post chewing gum. I had been working at Spitafields Market since 7.30am doing a promotions job (highly glam jobbing actor's job...if you ignore the freezing weather conditions) and had noticed a Hummingbird Bakery tucked away around the corner. Now, you may remember Reader, that the last time we went to a Hummingbird, the cake did rather well. In fact, it got 10/10, the highest we had ever scored a cake. The only reason it lost out overall was that the staff could have done with being a bit more attentive. So we were full of excitement to try the festive range. Unfortunately, the most exciting options were not available that day. We'd been hoping for their egg-nog cupcake, or maybe a go at the mint candycane one as we hadn't seen anything remotely similar anywhere else, but because the festive menu gets rotated on a daily basis, the only option available to us was the chocolate orange flavour. At first we were a little glum about this, it seemed a bit boring, I mean, yes, we got the Christmassy theme being that everyone always gets a Terry's chocolate orange in their stocking, but would it really knock our socks off? The server assured us that it was really good, and she did seem to know what she was talking about (although once again we weren't altogether delighted with the service, she only gave us one fork despite us asking for two, then gave us a wooden one when we asked for another, wasn't very smiley or conversational and took ages just to get a cupcake to us). As usual, the shop was clean, well presented and stylish, but they seriously lost out on Christmas points! SJ and I are very much into our big, cheesy Christmas decorations. All there was at hummingbird was a couple of stickers on the window. I mean, really. The other slight issue was that there was only one table inside, and it was reserved. In a cupcake shop. On one of the coldest days of the year. Yes. Really. So we had to sit outside with our cake! How cruel. 

But reader, please do not think that the experience was all bad. The cake....oh lordy....the cake was amazing. It was richer than their usual chocolate cake, so moist I didn't really need my drink and the orange flavour tasted like genuine orange rather than fake flavouring. The buttercream was perfect in both taste and texture and we agreed that if it wasn't for the fact that we were about to embark on a whole load of cupcakes, we would have gotten another one each! 

PRICE: 3.95 (Yes, blooming expensive, but seriously worth it)

Taste: 10/10 (again!)

Staff: 5/10

Price: 8/10

Festivity: 1/10

Overall: 24/40

Oh dear Hummingbird! The best cakes, as ever, but your service (and Christmas cheer) needs some looking at! 

COX, COOKIES & CAKES

Now, Cox, Cookies & Cakes is a company who knows how to do Christmas. We walked in to fairy lights everywhere, festive statues and Christmas tunes blaring. The staff were initially a little standoffish (although the guy was attempting to do some form of mini photoshoot at the time with a cake) but warmed up throughout our visit, chatting away and giving us advice on cake and were gorgeous as ever (Oh Patrick Cox, you know how to make us ladies happy). Once again, we were given free hot coco (this time with whipped cream!) with our cake and there were chairs available (thank goodness!). We opted for the orange and cranberry star cake. The cake had a lovely sugar star on top which was a nice touch, some juicy fruit that tasted as if it had been soaked prior to baking and you get a lot of cake for your money. The icing was also particularly good, and the ratio of icing to sponge was excellent. Unfortunately, the sponge was a little dry and not very orangey, it could almost have done with a splash of juice in there! The icing did make up for it though, and there was certainly none left on our plates by the end!

PRICE: £2.50

Flavour: 7.5/10

Price:10/10

Staff: 8/10

Festivity: 9/10

Overall: 34.5/40

Bravo Cox, Cookies and Cakes. We like you a lot.

SWEET COUTURE

As we were walking back from Cox, we chanced upon a little cake shop called Sweet Couture, whose window was full of gorgeously presented cakes and a triple tiered red velvet cake that made us dash in (even though we both really needed a wee and there was no loo). They had a cake called Winter Spice which caught our eye at once with it's silver balls and bright orange icing. The woman who served us was lovely, very chatty, very friendly, just what we look for in a staff person! And she gave us both forks and a knife. Fabulous. The shop was also very christmassy, with the window adorned with a massive ribbon, it looked as if it had been giftwrapped! Unfortunately, the shop was let down by the cake. The sponge was quite dry, and so spicy it actually burnt going down. Too much nutmeg had been used, although it was a valiant effort and we did love the silver balls. The icing wasn't half bad, but we would almost have preferred a vanilla sponge to offset the spice! 

PRICE: £2.50

Flavour: 6/10

Price: 8/10

Staff: 9/10

Festivity:10/10

Overall: 33/40

Nice try Sweet Couture, maybe we'll give you a go again in the future!

PRIMROSE BAKERY

Reader, you may remember that last time we tried Primrose Bakery, we loved it. The cakes were delicious, the staff were a delight and the shop was perfect. So we had some pretty high expectations. We were a little disappointed by the fact that they only had two Christmas options, Christmas Pudding or bog standard Vanilla (although granted, the decorations on the vanilla ones were gorgeous).

 We went for Christmas Pudding because it sounded like it might be interesting. And it was. Sort of. In not the best way we've ever come across.  The thing is, Primrose bakery is LOVELY. Walking in is like taking a breath of fresh air. It was quiet, there were chairs and the staff were nice. But there were no Christmas decorations. Which was a shame, because the cake was then a bit like being assaulted by Santa. They used brandy butter for icing, which as a concept is nice, but it was overpowering in the extreme.The cinnamon in the sponge was like smoking a stick of the stuff and we ended up leaving much of it on the plate. Such disappointment!

 PRICE: 2.50

Flavour:4/10

Staff: 7.5/10

Price: 7/10

Festivity: 3/10

Overall: 21.5/10

Look how sad you made SJ....for shame.

CANDY CAKES

Reader, we should have known better. We've done Candy Cakes before and it was rubbish. But we were cold and running out of ideas that were nearby. So we thought it would only be fair to give them another chance. They only had one option, blueberry with a marshmallow reindeer on top (which is great, unless you're a veggie like me). The staff were distracted and kept chatting instead of paying attention to us as customers (in fact, they were so distracted that they later missed seeing a french kid smoking inside and then stealing a load of their sweets. They had a minimum payment limit for cards (YOU'RE IN CENTRAL LONDON! IN A BIT THAT HAS NO CASHPOINTS!!!) The cake was a bit blah, as expected. It was more of a muffin with icing than a cupcake, and to be honest, they needed to take a page out of the american cake makers book, they did not do baking with blueberries well. The problem is, Candy Cakes always looks really nice from a distance, and then you try it and it's a bit poo. It's like someone really passionate about cake started it, then let a crap management company cake over and ruin it. At least they had a Christmas tree. 

PRICE: £3.50

Flavour: 4.5/10

Staff: 3/10

Price: 2/10

Festivity: 5/10

Overall: 14.5/40

The lower edge of moderate. You made us look like grumpy yetis. 

Keep tuned for our New Years blog entry folks!

Ash & SJ

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Another cake day, another cake blog entry...

Well, the response from my entry on mine and SJ's cake exploits has been fantastic (thank you all for your messages and tips!) so we've decided to make it a semi-regular occurrence! This may mean that by the end we'll be as fat as hippos (hippopotomi? That sounds vaguely sciency.) but will be delightful degrees of fun. And guess what? We did another one this week!

So here it is

ASH AND SJ'S SOHO/COVENT GARDEN AUTUMN CUPCAKE SHOP ROUND UP! (bit of a long title but oh well...)


1. PATISSERIE VALERIE'S BLUEBERRY CUPCAKE

First and foremost, I think it's important to point out that we love Patisserie Valerie. It's not only pretty, but it's cosy. And they do really pretty pastries, which we've really enjoyed in the past (indeed, as much as we love love love cupcakes, when we went in it was all we could do to not gobble up their flaky goodness instead).
And when we saw this cupcake, we were just as excited. I mean, look at it. It's blue. It has a white chocolate star on it for crying out loud. Someone's casually but professionally drizzled a cheeky bit of chocolate over it. Even the paper casing had a little frill. It was a bit like seeing a fittie on the tube that you know is a bit out of your league but is looking at you with sultry eyes none the less. But like in that situation, you know that there must be something slightly off, like an STD or a girl's dodgily tattooed on their bum that sours the deal. After all, surely something that looks that good can't taste as fabulous? It's like a trap or something.

And in this case, our theory was right. When we ordered it, our server looked a bit shocked, like 'Seriously? You only want one? You're crazy...' Which was a pretty great way of up-selling because a) we felt instantly guilty and b) we thought that meant that the cake would be so good we'd want way more. But we managed to resist. Now, it is also important to point out that we didn't actually know what the flavour of cupcake was when we got it. Our choice was made by going 'oohh blue, pretty!'. The cakes weren't clearly labelled, not that there was much in the way of choice of colours anyway. When we tasted it, we were both confused as heck. I tasted what I thought might be lemon, SJ picked out a grape flavour, but we were both in agreement that it was sickly as anything. The server was the one that told us what it was supposed to taste like, but neither of us could actually taste any blueberry in the icing. The sponge was almost brioche-like, on the verge of savoury, which turned out to be a good thing because if the icing had been any sweeter we'd have lost teeth. It balanced it slightly. Because of the sickly nature of the icing, it would benefited from some fresh fruit like bitter blueberries rather than chocolate as a decoration to offset the sweetness. We agreed that we'd probably not have been able to finish a whole cake ourselves, and we're pretty greedy.

So although the cake was aright, it didn't set us on fire like some have in the past. A resounding 'MEH' for Patisserie Valerie! In the end, it got 20 and a half out of thirty.

2. CRUMBS & DOILIES PUMPKIN AND CREAM CHEESE CUPCAKES

SJ had sent me a link before we'd set off, that led to the Crumbs and Doilies website. I've got to say, I was pretty excited. They seemed passionate about their cakes, a passion that I recognised pretty darn well. And I loved the sound of their cake flavours. I mean, who could possibly have a problem with salted caramel right? And when we got there, we were excited to see that they had a seasonal cake. Pumpkin and cream cheese! How twee! How fabulously autumnal! With visions of smokey bonfire flavours and that lovely sharp tang you get with pumpkin flavours, we dug in our pockets for the £2 required (a little steep for a stall cupcake, but it sounded so great we thought it would be a bargain). The guy running the stall hadn't actually tried it yet, but was about to sink his teeth into one as we arrived. We can only wonder what his response to it was. 

But before we talk about flavour, we have to mention a bit of a pet peeve of ours you may have noticed from our previous blog entry. No box. Ok, so they included a paper doily. Which was a nice touch, but the paper doily was no excuse for the cake being just put in a plastic wrapping (not even a flat bottomed bag!) so we had to carry it around all day like a bleedin' newborn. Luckily the cream didn't smoosh up in the wrapping. 

Right, now we've got that out of the way, we need to move on to the next problem. It looked a bit boring. Which isn't a massive issue, because grown up, boring looking cupcakes can be seen as elegant (although we prefer ones that look like cartoon pictures by a five year old, with lots of glitter and nicely piped icing). But this one had icing that had clearly just been spooned on and some half hearted pistachio (why not pumpkin seeds by the by, it would have kept with the theme far more!). It looked like the cupcake equivalent to water crackers. Yeah they're minimalist, but we prefer sparkles thanks. Or at least a small flag.

On the taste side of things, we actually had to double check what the flavour was. We'd been really excited about this one, thinking it was a truly unusual flavouring. But firstly, the 'cream cheese' frosting, didn't taste anything like cream cheese. It tasted like soap. We decided that this was probably down to too much icing sugar being used, an easy mistake to make but it was cloying and quite unpleasant. The cake itself tasted of carrot cake, so much so in fact that we got SJ's sister to come and do a blind tasting so we could see what she thought. Like us, she was pretty sure it was carrot cake. Which was nice for her, she loves carrot cake. But since we were expecting pumpkin flavours, we were seriously unimpressed. Saying that, even though the cake had been carried around all day, it still tasted fresh, with great texture. Overall we gave it 13/30. It would have got more if we'd thought it was a carrot cake, but Reader, it lied. IT. LIED. 

3. HUMMINGBIRD BAKERY'S CARAMELISED NUT CUPCAKE

Oh. My. God. We want to live in The Hummingbird Bakery. We want to bathe in the Hummingbird Bakery icing. We frankly, quite like it.

Walking in, the décor was lush. It was like seeing where good cupcakes go after they die. Lovely wallpaper, a calming atmosphere, a glowing pregnant woman behind the till. And the cakes! Wow. They looked like you could have got them from Tiffany's, like they were carved from clouds. They were a bit pricey, but for what looked like luxury items, it was a brilliant deal. Plus, even though we personally ate in, we noticed that they provided individual cake boxes should we have wanted them. Heaven! 

The choices were sensational, but we decided on the caramelised nut flavour because it looked so shiny and it was the 'Taste of The Day'. The nuts were golden in their caramel casing, the icing fluffy and soft. When we cut it in two, the sponge slid apart like Moses parting the sea. And the taste. Oh man. The taste was so glorious that it left us speechless, our eyes wide like saucers. It passed SJ's goosebump taste. They were so wonderful that they made us think of childhood Christmases, sugar plum fairies and  bedtime stories about royal banquets. They were really generous with the icing and nuts and in the buttercream, there were tiny flakes of caramel which melted on the tongue with an electrifying crackle. And best of all, although the icing was super sweet, it managed to not be sickly! For the first time, we awarded a cake 10/10 for price, and it ended up only being marked down on price (because it was pretty pricey) and staff (because they didn't really make any effort with us).

4. COX, COOKIES AND CAKES BANOFFEE MAN CAKE

When we first talked about doing a cake blog in SoHo, the sin district of London, Cox, Cookies and Cakes was one we knew we had to try. We'd walked past it many times and had seen the queues of people buying rude cakes and the dance beats streaming from it. Patrick Cox, the fabulous shoe designer, started the firm, and we are so so glad we did. Cox Cakes is like the Sex and the City of the cupcake world. It's risqué, camp, urban and utterly charming. When we walked in, we were greeted by the (frankly adorable) server who donned a pvc studded apron and made great recommendations. Unfortunately, they were out of their famous mint chocolate c**k cakes, so we decided to go for a banoffee man cake instead. It was gorgeously decorated with fudge bits around it and the pink chocolate torso poking salubriously out of the saucy icing. We were slightly outraged at the £4 price-tag but our shock was MUCH lessened when the server told us we got a free hot coco each for eating in, served elegantly in tall shot glasses. If you look at it that way, for two drinks and a cake, £4 seems paltry. The cream was particularly wonderful, whipped cream cheese tasting with a buttery edge. We couldn't taste much in the way of banana, but we didn't really care. The cake had style, it tasted wonderful and the texture was to die for, and just eating in the shop was an out of this world experience. Patrick Cox is one of our new heroes, he's clearly put his stamp on the place and we're so glad he did. At 27/30, he was our winner for the day (and props to the server, who got the place a score of 10/10 for staff!)

Plus of course, I was even tempted into bringing a cake back for the lad, which he hugely enjoyed...Bravo Cox, Cookies and Cakes. Your naughty cakes have brought joy into our hearts and fat into our arteries.

5. GREGG'S CHOCOLATE CHILLI CUPCAKE AND HALLOWEEN CUPCAKE

As you might recall Reader, we are very interested in finding a cake that's more available to the masses nationally, one that you can try whether you live in London or Liverpool. So we always make sure we test a high street variety. This week, we decided upon Gregg's. After all, they make a damn fine cheese and onion pasty, so why wouldn't they make great cupcakes? We were excited by the prospect of the chocolate and chilli cakes in particular, with thoughts in our minds of the glorious film Chocolat and Heston's brilliant creations. Then, we noticed that there was a special deal on where you could also get the Halloween cupcakes (in orange and purple) for 70p a cupcake! So, loving a good deal as we do, we got one of each.

Reader, we've never been so gutted over a cupcake before.

The service, first and foremost was dreadful. The server didn't know what cakes we were talking about, nor about the deal, then tried to shove them into a far too small paper bag (they're cream topped for crying out loud!) before we intervened and begged him to put them in a box. From the way he acted you'd think it was the maddest idea ever.

Now when we got them home, we got the chance to really look at them. Well, the past the pretty test at least. They were nicely piped, unusually decorated and we liked the novelty of the colours and flavour ideas. That's about where the good things end.

We'll start with the lesser of two evils, the Orange Halloween cupcake. Well, for a child, who likes bright things, this cupcake might work. But the icing is acidic tasting and extremely artificial, with a sharp overly sherberty taste to it. If we were kids, this was a cake that would probably have ended up mashed in our hair rather than settled in our bellies. The sponge was slightly salty and dry and even the gummy worm on top tasted of bland sadness. Saying that, it might keep a child entertained for a few seconds. And at 70p, it's not that big a deal if they don't eat it. We wouldn't recommend trying it though, it tasted of cheap penny sweets, the kind that you find at the very bottom of the cinema pick n mix bag after you've eaten all the gummy worms and quality street and you can't remember why you got them, because they even LOOK poisonous.

 And now for the second one. Reader, a cupcake has never made me feel physically sick before. This one did. The cake was ridiculously hard to cut, which is never a good sign. And as soon as we put the thing in our mouths, the reaction was visceral. Words like 'argh!' 'No!' and 'Wrong!' were bandied around. We could only compare the flavour to a misguided pizza attempt, or mouldy monster munch. Not only did the cake contain chocolate and chilli, but also red pepper and lime (???) and for some reason, the makers had decided that rather than combining the chocolate and chilli in the sponge and then making like a chocolate chilli ganache for the icing, the'd make a dry, almost sandy chocolate sponge with an icing of chilli, red pepper and lime. It was so wrong. Naughty Gregg's. Naughty. 70p may be cheap, but it got 0/10 on our scale. Why? Because you should have been paying US to eat that monstrosity. In fact, it was so awful that our faces couldn't even possibly show how terrible it was. We had to ask a friend's cat to come and do it for us. So here are our scores, and Oscar the Cat's reaction on our behalf.

Next time on our cake travels, we'll be testing Department stores in London for their cake stakes!

Sugary kisses

Ash and SJ

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