To think cupcakes are just fairy cakes

[moogster1a]

Someone please explain to me why fairy cakes with icing on have become a mark of both domestic goddessry and that you live in a very naice area because people are willing to pay £2 or more for them.
In fact, is there anyone on MN daft enough to have coughed up a huge amount for one?

But you have forgotten Top Hats... A cone is removed from the top of a volcano styled fairy cake the gap filled with butter cream icing and then the hat popped back on top.

Made in Domestic Science post scones and before we tacked the Victoria Sponge (rock cakes and raspberry buns having been successfully negotiated!).

No, no, no . . . top hats are made in small bun cases with a blob of white or milk chocolate at the bottom, a marshmallow and then a corresponding chocolate butter stuck to the top.

I think we've the buns sorted now and know our butterfly cakes from our fairy cakes. Cupcakes used to be the shop-bought ones with thick, flat icing on the top. I remember them coming in foil cases and licking all the icing off the paper.

Cupcakes now, made at home, are made with a batter, and decorated with oodles of swirled icing on top. They do look good. Dead easy to make, so why would anyone pay 50p, let along £2 for one. I always avoid adding any food colouring to them. Seems a bit extreme to add half a bottle of red food colouring just for the sake of it.

American cup cakes are muffin sized, nicely decorated sponge cakes with a thin layer of icing. Usually vanilla flavour, but can be made with chocolate sponge. Or even lemon.

So don't go blaming us for those thick icing things y'all pass off as cup cakes. Cuz they ain't cup cakes.

I couldn't bring myself to eat one. All the different colours make me feel queasy.

I agree with whoever it was that said cake should only ever be brown or yellow.

They're bloody buns. I refuse to call them cupcakes.

cup cake/fairy cake - doesnt matter, im not paying £2 for one

Oh god, the cake:topping ratio is all wrong. Ate one once and still feel sick

Yes have to agree with Tee- cupcakes we make in the US, at home at least, don't have a ton of buttercream piped on top of them. Yes, the cake part is often bigger than a fairy cake (we use muffin tins, typically) but then they're just frosted with a bit of buttercream, using an icing knife. Maybe some sprinkles added for effect if it's for a child's birthday party. The sponge is certainly not dry, at least not by design. It would be dry if the person baking them didn't know what they were doing, and/or perhaps left them in the oven too long.

Unfortunately, Sex and the City made them trendy, and bakeries started churning out monstrosities with gobs of icing piled on top and charging silly amounts of money for them. Then that trend came over here. Everyone who can turn on an oven sees them as a way to make money, so while there are many people who can make a nice cake (if you're reading this and you make cupcakes for a living, well of course I'm talking about you! ) I've had more than a few dry, sad cupcakes that all the icing in the world couldn't resurrect and make palatable. I have also had some terrible fairy cakes, if we're being honest.

Are people still opening cupcake businesses? By "people", I mean middle class SAHMs with rich husbands.

Round here, yes! I admit to buying them occaisionally when lazy but I do like making them when I have time.

Glace icing and sprinkles rule in this house, none of us really like buttercream.

I used to love the chocolate cupcakes you could buy with the the flat, deep chocolate fudgy icing.

Yes the "new, improved" cupcakes are a real pet-hate of mine!

That massive inch of buttercream, icing, whatever it is on top, just makes me feel sick looking at them. I would never buy them because of that.

I like nice simple old-fashioned fairy cakes with nice slather of icing and maybe a few delicate decorations ...

The sex and the city bakery is magnolia bakery. I have the (expensive) recipe book. The cakes in it are actually excellent. I recommend it, especially the apple cake.

must those are Butterfly cakes.

I'm slightly bemused by the opprobrium heaped upon poor old cupcakes - it's all just cake isn't it and you choose the ones you like best?!

I am a SAHM who bakes and sells 'cupcakes' and Celebration cakes (my husband isn't rich and I am not middle class) I only charge £1.25 per cupcake though as I live in a Pit Village up North.

Cupcakes have at least twice the mixture in than 'buns' or fairy cakes used to have back in the day. But not as much as muffins.

If I do 24 cupcakes I use as much mixture as I do for an 8inch sponge. And lots of people have them as an alternative to an actual cake.

I find that they are better eaten on a plate with a fork. But have to agree kids just lick off the butter cream.

I am happy to take people's money whilst they are popular

So when I was a kid (around the time of the dinosaurs) fairy cakes were, as several people have described, little sponge cakes with white or pink fondant icing on the top, plus a few sprinkles or jelly beans. (This is how I still make them.) But there was one very specific instance of cup cakes, namely Mr Kipling's, and they came with thick chocolate, pink or yellow icing. Absolutely disgusting. We loved them, of course.

Oh YY I remember them - REALLY thick choc icing that tasted nothing like chocolate and they were in silver foil cases!

To continue: one of my gripes against Nigella is that in her Domestic Goddess book she recommends using royal icing rather than fondant icing for fairy cakes, which is completely unnecessary. She also recommends more than double the amount of icing sugar you actually need. Tsk.

Those are the ones, valium!

It's the same as paying over £3 for a coffee. The world has been hoodwinked.

Valium my nana used to buy me those and fondant fancies!

I actually went to a cupcake making day last Saturday! I wouldn't have eaten them for the world, but the girls at work hoovered them up.

We have a market up here that seems to have a constant turnover of cupcake stalls. Every week there are new ones to replace the ones that closed. They never seem to have any customers, apart from the odd nine year old trying to beg her mother to pay £2 for a cake.

I think it's hilarious.

Also, handmade soap stalls. Usually with soaps made to look like cupcakes. You can spot both types of stall from behind as they always have chelsea tractors parked behind them.

I suppose it gives these silly people something to do.

hackmum/valium - the fabulous bakin' boys cupcakes are like that if you want a modern version.

My sis was going to pay ££ for cupcakes for a party, so i made her some fairy cakes instead and all the kids were grabbing at them and asking to take them home for siblings . 4 egg victoria sponge mix, a tub of betty crocker vanilla frosting and some sprinkles.

ooooh those Kipling ones used to make you're teeth go.