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.

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!

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.

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.

While I mostly review cupcakes, on the odd occasion I do actually make them myself. After one of my friends introduced me to Bake it In a Cake I have been wanting to try this for myself. Finally slightly unambitious I decided rather than making my own mini-pies or cookies to bake in a cupcake, I would instead go for a store bought cookie – I chose the Oreo. My bake it in a cake is a chocolate cupcake with cream-cheese oreo icing and an oreo in the centre.

To make the cupcakes, I started my trimming down individual chocolate wafers and putting them in the bottom of a paper cupcake liner. You could technically do this with half an Oreo, but twisting apart Oreos seems to have too high a risk of failure to me. I then filled up the liner halfway with a chocolate cake batter – I just used a basic, by scratch recipe. Then I put an Oreo into the batter, before topping it off. I followed the baking instructions for chocolate cupcakes, testing them after the initial time. For the icing, I made a cream cheese icing, using half the recommended icing sugar and then put the crumbs from cutting the chocolate wafers into the icing.

The icing was probably my favourite part of this cupcake. I only had whole wheat flour on hand, so the cupcakes were quite dense, but still very tasty.

Nadia G, the master chef on Bitchin’ Kitchen makes me want to cook in style, so don’t be surprised if you see my cooking up a storm in heels and a gorgeous dress in the fall!  All I need is the perfect apron to protect my beloved dresses.  While I think I might try and make my own, there are many different styles on Etsy for those who cannot sew (or do not have mother’s that they hope will help them!) My favourites are the cupcake and hedgehog aprons from Annie’s Attic, or the cupcake one by Baked With Love Aprons.

Image from Bitchin’ Kitchen.

Red Velvet Cupcake - Dessert Lady (Leah Wong)

Presentation: 3/5
Icing: 4/5
Cake: 3/5
Selection: 1/5
Location: 5/5
Total: 16/25

Despite the high cost of the Dessert Lady’s cupcake, it was exactly the type of cupcake you could make at home. While I know cupcakes in generally range from $2.50-$3, this cupcake fell on the high end of the price spectrum, though the quality of the cupcake did not justify the price. The Dessert Lady has a prime location, and with the higher overall price range of things in Yorkville, it’s understandable that they would have a higher price tag on their cupcake, but honestly, in the future I would buy a cupcake from Starbucks over this one.

For starters, the cake was really dry. I’m a huge fan of red velvet cake, but I was disappointed with the cake portion. The icing was fine, though I felt they should have topped it up much higher to compensate for the dryness of the cake. The icing was a light, cream cheese icing that wasn’t anything special, but was the best part of the cupcake. I also wasn’t impressed with the presentation of the cupcake, even though they pipe on the icing only after a cupcake is ordered, it didn’t cover the entire top of the cupcake, one of my pet peeves. It also wasn’t very visually pleasing, definitely not the type of cupcake I would as a gift. As I mentioned before, there was only one cupcake to choose from when I was there – I would have preferred to try the Amaretto cupcake as it is at least a unique flavour.

All in all, the only thing the Dessert Lady has going for it is the individual semi reusable container the cupcake came in, and the  location, though with three-four Starbucks in close proximity I’d rather go there for a cupcake than return to the Dessert Lady.

Flavour: Double Chocolate
Cake:3/5
Icing:3/5
Flavour:Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
Cake:3/5
Icing:4/5
Presentation:3/5
Flavour Selection:1/5
Location:5/5
Total Points:15/25 and 16/25

Despite my high hopes for Miss Cora’s Kitchen I was disappointed from the moment I arrived at the shop.  I’ve never been a fan of mini cupcakes, as I figure you might as well go for the full thing, but I wasn’t excited enough about the cupcakes here to pick up a full size.  Instead I sampled two mini cupcakes, a chocolate one and a carrot cake with cream cheese icing with them.  There was really limited selection when I went, with three types of mini cupcakes but only one type of full size cupcake.

The chocolate cupcake was dry, despite being towered with a thick chocolate icing.  The large amount of icing felt like a compensation for the small amount of cake, but there was just too much on it – I REALLY like icing and all, but it was a thick glob that I did not enjoy.  The icing was also poorly distributed; I would have preferred it reached the sides and wasn’t piled as high.

I’m a huge fan of cupcakes with cream cheese icing; it’s usually a safe choice as cream cheese icing is pretty difficult to mess up.  In my experience I find cupcake places with poor buttercream icing often make up for it with their cream cheese icing.  The icing on this cupcake was fine, but it wasn’t phenomenal.  I was not a fan of the carrot cake at all.  I’ve been spoiled as my mom makes an amazing carrot cake, but I felt Miss Cora’s Kitchen just needs a better recipe.  The cake had an unpleasant texture – there was also coconut and raisins in the cake, two things I don’t believe belong in carrot cake, but that’s just my opinion.  As it was a small cupcake I found the extra ingredients took away from the cake, as there was too much texture in a small amount of cake.

Both cupcakes are okay in terms of presentation, but they do look quite amateur.  What Miss Cora’s Kitchen makes up for in lack of a good cupcake is in location.  I love Kensington Market – it’s walking distance from my apartment and there’s lots to do.  However, next time I’m in Kensington I’m passing by Miss Cora’s Kitchen for cupcakes, though someone ordered pizza while I was there and it smelled delicious.  All in all I would not recommend the cupcakes there and question who called them Toronto’s Best Cupcake – I don’t believe they’ve ever tasted a really good cupcake.