This is a Marks and Spencer cupcake.
After months of publicising the fact that they're going to launch a cupcake range, M&S are finally launching them in store tomorrow.
There was an article in today's Metro today about them which featured a bit of background about the research the M&S cupcake guru, Matt McAuliffe, did to come up with their new range, including eating at 40 different NY bakeries in a week (if he'd gotten in touch I could've emailed him my extensive list of NY cupcake places, reaching about 47 at last count!)
Not sure I agree with his assumption that the UK isn't ready for full on New York style cupcakes...
The problem is there is a big difference in taste over the pond, he reckons. 'Brits have a sweet tooth but not as sickly as Americans. This large amount of icing was the biggest challenge when making our cakes. In the end, we decided to balance the sweetness in the buttercream with fruit.'
I think cupcakeries/bakeries such as Hummingbird, Buttercup and Primrose (to name just 3) are doing very well selling American style cupcakes and whenever people ask me where to get cupcakes they tend to ask for "American style". I will give these a try - I'm hoping to get my hands on some tomorrow on the way into work so expect an update soon!
The whole article can be viewed here, and includes recipes for Hummingbird Bakeries banana chocolate cupcakes (from their FAB book) and a M&S 'all natural' strawberry cupcake recipe, although I personally wouldn't make it as it has oil in (the article says that in NY rapeseed oil is often used instead of butter but I know this isn't the case in the better bakeries we visited so I'll just stick to baking buttercream cupcakes - oil cupcakes when I've had the misfortune to try them just seem oily to me and I just can't imagine myself pouring oil into a cake mix!)
Will report back on these asap!
