As of Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, I have retired from being a fashion writer… On College Candy that is.

Since May 2009, when my first fashion column, Fashion Porn, launched on the website, I have been constantly writing about fashion. In the past two years I have written over 100 FP columns alone. So, it’s time for a break. I’ve loved being able to share my thoughts on fashion with the readers of CC, but I’ve started to run out of things to write about. I’m coming close to graduating from university (May 2012, fingers crossed!) and writing about university fashion does get to be a little monotonous. After all, only so many people will side with my belief that you should never, EVER, wear sweats or pajamas to class.

So, rather than make you wade through the depths of my writer profile on CC, I’ve decided to post links to some of my favourite fashion posts. Enjoy!

• Spring 2010 Fashion Week All-Stars
• Golden Globe Fashion: Our Fave Bits and Pieces
• Campus Couture: Taylor, Ryerson (reposted on Glamour.com)
• A College Candy Tribute to Alexander McQueen
• Fall 2010 Fashion Week All-Stars
• Fashion: When to Spend and When to Save
• Take Off Your Clothes With the S.W.A.P. Team
• Fashion Porn: Doin’ it out West
• Spring 2011 Fashion Week All-Stars
• Shop Your Closet: Shorts
• Fashion Porn: Gettin’ It On at the Zoo
• Shop Your Closet: Leather Skirt 
• What to Wear to your Winter Internship
• Shop Your Closet: Plaid Shirt
• Fashion Porn: Put a Bow on it 
• Shop Your Closet: Boyfriend Jeans
• Budget Stylista – Dressing up Sportswear

I’m in Ghana until the beginning of August and will not be posting on this blog regularly. If you want to read about my travels check out Leah Goes to Ghana to read about my adventures.

The last cupcake place I tried in London was Candy Cakes in the Covent Garden Piazza. Candy Cakes is a chain of coffee, cakes and shakes shops, though there are five in the city, this is the only one I ran into during my travels. The cupcake I had from here was unlike any I have ever encountered before. The topping is not really icing. It’s sticky and super sweet, but I don’t really know what it is.

I had a blueberry gourmet cupcake from there. The cake was pretty good, but I couldn’t really get over the icing. I did enjoy the cupcake overall, but I don’t know if I would have another. I like candy and I like cupcakes, but I don’t want candy melted on top of my cupcake. Candy Cakes does carry a series of more traditional cupcakes, but I didn’t try and out, though I wish I had so I could see if they were more my taste with normal icing.

The one upside about Candy Cakes is that the icing doesn’t damage despite the fact they put it in a plastic bag. I crammed mine in a bag with other shopping and it remained undamaged after a walk about to find a place to eat it (there was a eat-in price for the cupcakes I wanted to avoid.) Even though Candy Cakes wasn’t my favourite cupcake during my trip (probably ranks third out of four), I would still recommend trying it, even just for the novelty of it. It’s like The Magnolia Bakery in NYC – the cupcake isn’t the best, but you still have to try one, just because it’s Magnolia.

The second last stop on my cupcake quest through London was Hummingbird Bakery in Portobello Market. This was the only bakery I had heard of before hitting the streets with my cupcake finding senses, as my dear friend Carly told me about their cupcakes. She also gave me a Hummingbird Bakery cookbook for my birthday, which due to the fact I don’t have a scale/haven’t had a chance to convert recipes I have yet to actually try. Summer project maybe?

Anyways I went to Hummingbird after stumbling across the Cupcake Company, which is located fairly close by. As I had already eaten one cupcake that day, and Carly had headed home to rest after our excursions to Madame Tussaud’s and Abbey Road, I decided to get a couple boxed up and take them back to her flat to eat after dinner.

For Carly I bought a red velvet cupcake and for myself a chocolate with buttercream icing. After having brought back Kooky Bakes, Carly was disappointed by Hummingbird’s red velvet. My cupcake was also not the greatest. I’m skeptical about these types of sprinkles on cupcakes, as I find they detract from the cupcake. In this case I felt that this usual skepticism was justified, as the cupcake was amateur at best.

Hummingbird gets points for pretty packaging and a lovely storefront, but that’s about it. They do have a bunch of different flavours of cupcakes offered every day, and I’m curious how those measure up. If you’re in the Portobello Market area go out of your way to try The Cupcake Company and skip over Hummingbird.

The second cupcake shop I went to in London was The Cupcake Company, which was in Kensington, not too far from Portobello Road Market. My sixth-sense for cupcakes led me wandering down from Notting Hill tube station when it was the opposite direction from Portobello Road. Lucky for me I ended up across the street from The Cupcake Company.

Inside I ate a banana cupcake with caramel buttercream. It’s rare to find banana cupcakes, especially ones that are closer to a cake than a bread. As much as I like banana bread, I find it too dense to eat with icing. This cake was light, moist and very tasty. This was my favourite of the cupcake places that I tried when in London.

This little cupcake shop was not all that far from Portobello Road, and worth the trek down, as the cupcakes were much better than Hummingbird Bakery which is in the market. I’ll write about those cupcakes a little later. While I was in the shop a women was picking up a bunch of cupcakes for her son, and placing an order for his birthday. Loyal customers are always a good indication at businesses, especially happy moms!

Cupcakes from my bake-sale fundraiser (Matt Demers)

This is kind of a random posting of cupcake links mid-week, but I’ve been pretty loaded down with school. I’ll try and get back to a regular schedule at the end of the week. Above is a picture of cupcakes I made as part of my bake-sale fundraiser for my trip to Ghana. My friends have been generously making donations to my trip in exchange for baked goods – it’s very much appreciated.

Cupcakes in a jar! I have no jars, but it’s a fun way to package cupcakes.

Magnolia bakery founder sued by others after opening an unauthorized location in Athens, Greece.

Mompreneur stigma and the Cupcake Challenge – Forbes magazine discusses how female entrepreneurs have moved past the “cutesy” businesses of baking and making things for babies. According to the article when women pitch these ideas when seeking banks from loans, they are faced with skepticism about financial returns.

Will work for cupcakes. Anyone want to buy one of these for my fridge?

A few weeks ago I tweeted about how one of my secret life ambitions is to open a food truck. I’ve changed my mind, I now want to open a double-decker food bus, which is what a woman in Albany, NY did! Bettie’s Double Decker Cupcake Stand is an old double decker bus converted into a cupcake shop. Amazing!

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Blake Lively sent Christopher Bailey cupcakes as an apology for missing the Burberry show last month. A good cupcake would make me forgive quite a bit.

Katy Perry wore a cupcake dress again while performing in the UK . The skirt resembled a cupcake tree, the skirt had tiers topped with bright coloured cupcakes. She has also performed in a cupcake-print skirt before. While the cupcakes on Perry’s dress are fake, a bride asked the girls of DC Cupcakes to make her wedding dress out of cupcakes. As much as I love cupcakes, if I get married I’m leaving the cupcakes on the dessert table.

A true sign your bakery has made it big? When Google throws its support behind it — which it did for a Rosewell bakery serving frozen yogurt and cupcakes. Google gave Cloud 9 Frozen Yogurt and Cupcakes new laptops, cellphones, accounting services and $100,00 (USD) for marketing. Not that they even need it after this endorsement. Google gave five small businesses in the United States endorsements. Cloud 9 may be sponsored by Google, but its website is in need of a major overhaul.

A Seattle Weekly blogger calls bullshit on food trends. For years articles about “the new cupcake” have been running. First, the macaron took on the cupcake – but it was “not American enough” to tackle the super dessert. The doughnut has been trying to breakthrough the past few years with minimal success. I talked about pies entrance to the dessert war a few weeks ago, and I just can’t see it truly taking on the cupcake. Pie requires a plate and fork to eat, while you can eat a cupcake anywhere. Also, there are so many elements to a pie to screw up, meaning mass-producing pies doesn’t have amazing success. Tarts might have a running chance, but I think it’s a long shot for the pie.

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Forever 21 is now carrying cupcake earbuds. Want!

A New Jersey bakery is leeching off Charlie Sheen’s antics with a tribute cupcake. The Charlie Sheen Tiger Blood cupcake is becoming one of the bakeries best sellers. Personally I think we just need to stop paying attention to Sheen and hopefully he’ll go get the help he obviously needs.

An LA artist combines two of my favourite things — installation art and cupcakes. The piece entitled “Let Them Eat Cupcakes,” is using cupcakes to look at the scale of hunger in the city. In exchange for a cupcake from her pop-up shop, she is having write out stories about homelessness and hunger on index cards.

A UC Berkley student mapped out cupcake shops in relation to the territory of two San Francisco gangs. Previously, Dr. Kathe Newman, a Rutgers Urban Policy Lecturer looked at how cupcake shops in New York City provide “a more accurate and timely guide to the frontiers of urban gentrification than traditional demographic and real estate data sets.”

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A mother of two attacked a bakery employee and smashed up the store’s display after learning they were out of her favourite type of cupcake in Cardiff, UK. She caused £400 damage to the store. An anonymous donor has offered up a £220 or 100 cupcakes reward for information to locate the culprit.

On Glenn Beck’s show he used cupcakes to explain inflation and global food riots.

A Financial Post article talks about the success of the Cupcakes chain in Vancouver. Heather White and Lori Joyce now have six stores and 70 employees, as well as a show on the W Network called Cupcake Girls. Years ago I went to try a cupcake from one of their locations, and it was honestly one of the worst cupcakes I have ever have. Here’s hoping they’ve adapted their recipes since then!

Pie is considered to be the latest dessert to battle the cupcake craze. FitSugar shows nutrition comparisons of cupcakes and pie. While pie generally has less calories, I think really the “everything is okay in moderation” rule applies to both desserts.

In Toronto the gourmet doughnut trend is catching on. I’ve heard “doughnuts are the new cupcakes” several times over, and I don’t think this has been the case in most cities, but we’ll see what happens in Toronto.

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For my reading break I spent the week visting my friend Carly in London. This was both my first time in London and my first trip overseas. As with every city I visit, I went out in search of cupcakes, trying four different bakeries in my week there. As I didn’t take notes while eating the cupcakes as I usually do, I won’t do my usual rating system. Instead I’ll just provide my thoughts about the cupcake, the location, selection, without giving it a grade.

First up is Kooky Bakes, the cupcakes I purchased from just outside Brick Lane’s Sunday Up Market. There were so many vendors selling cupcakes around Brick Lane that I had trouble deciding which to choose. Kooky Bakes’ white chocolate and raspberry cupcake drew me in, so I returned there at the end of the day. While I’ve eaten a lot of cupcakes over the year, I’m not actually sure I’ve ever had a white chocolate and raspberry one. This is however my favourite flavour of gelato.

I bought two cupcakes from Kooky Bakes near the end of the day, and was given a 50p discount. The two cupcakes cost £4 and were wrapped individually in paper bags in a way that didn’t damage the icing. The other cupcake I bought for Carly was red velvet with cream cheese icing. The white chocolate raspberry cake was moist and had an unexpected, but pleasant, surprise in the form of a raspberry filling (see below). The icing was the right level of sweet, and overall very delicious.

For a small vendor at a market, Kooky Bakes had a large selection of cupcakes, whoopie pies (which in general I have yet to try), and possibly even cookies. Full section is listed on their website. The vendor has prime real estate just on the way out from the Sunday Up Market, making it easy to find amidst a large number of vendors. The only downside is the plethora of baked goods vendors to choose from. I will definitely try to eat my way through more of Brick Lane on my next visit to London. If you’re there, go try Kooky Cakes; you won’t be disappointed.