It's not a cupcake it's a fairy cake with more butter icing than is proportionate to the amount of cake you are eating

[CanISawItOff]

My rage about cupcakes fairy cakes really is disproportionate to the matter at hand but really, seriously, just STOP WITH IT!

But why this glee and snobbery

Why isn't it like any other food - you don't like the food, or the packaging - don't eat one. Buy a fairy cake. Leave them to us that do!

I don't understand the depth of feeling

Or are you all also so irate about different types of bread 'I HATE those women that make fucking focaccia'

I get miffed with them as they seem to get offered to DD in school on an almost weekly basis with kids birthdays in school, snacks provided my parents at girl scouts or other activities if she did eat it all she'd be like a hyperactive thing bouncing off the walls.

Admite they look gorgeous - but not for me!

OP - bless your heart - I clicked on this thread to point out what a fairy cake is but see you have already done it. Oh how I used to love my Gran's fairy cakes, but what was the bit she put in it? Not all sickly like the shite around now.

Oh agreed. They are fairy cakes. It's one of my pet peeves.

Yes, too much icing, but apart from that they are lovely! Total rip off though. So easy and cheap to make.

There are, always have been and always will be a fairy cake end of. Simples

I think a fairy cake can only have a delicate drizzle of glace icing (posh name for icing sugar and water/lemon juice) and a scatter of hundreds and thousands.

I absolutely agree. the only thing worse is a poster telling you to keep calm and eat a cupcake. I've never eaten one - I imagine the topping to test of sweet margerine. Butterfly cakes with jam and proper buttercream icing are very nice though.

Fairy cakes and cupcakes are different beasts. I prefer cupcakes, but I only eat the icing.

To be fair, I have been know to eat Aunt Bessie's synthetic buttercream from the pot with a spoon, so perhaps I am not the best (or indeed the healthiest) judge.

Yeah, fucking focaccia makers. BASTARDS.

We are making cupcakes for DS2 to take into school this week for his birthday treat. We are using American cake mixes and buttercream icing. I'm American as well. So I'm quite happy to call them cupcakes. The little cakes we buy in the shop or in the store are fairy cakes, however. Any that we make homemade (not using the American cake mixes) are also fairy cakes.

I suppose it just makes it feel more of an "occasion" for DS2.

It's all semantics, isn't it? Cakes is cakes, and there's nothing wrong with cakes, no matter what you call them.

I can remember a recipe my mum has for mocha cupcakes which is over 30 years old so cupcake isn't really that new. They aren't buttercream topped though, they're fudgy instead. Fairy cakes to me are plain/vanilla cupcakes with glacé icing and tons of decorations on top.

I love them, whatever name they come under, as long as there is less icing than cake.

Anyone else intrigued as to what norks's job is?

I want to know when it became acceptable for the brownies at the village fete to sell Krispy Kreme doughnuts (donuts?) instead of an eclectic mix of home made creations? I wouldn't have even minded if they were home made cupcakes!

What I don't get is why every woman who bakes a decent bun suddenly now believes they can make their millions baking cakes and starts up a 'business'. No, you haven't got a business, you're just screwing over your less Kitchenly-inclined mates who you'd previously have just made cakes for their kid's parties as a favour, by charging them for something they could have made themselves but feel they HAVE to 'support your business venture'.

And no, actually all these Heston-style mixes of flavours aren't a good experiment, they're just fucking shite. If you were supposed to have raspberry and lemon cakes with cardamom icing frosting, they'd have been invented years ago.

And of course I'm not directing this rant at the girl who sits next to me in the office...

So if cupcakes are just big fairy cakes, a Victoria sponge is a massive cupcake or an enormous fairy cake or is a fairy cake a tiny Victoria sponge? Thank fuck I don't give a shit what they are called....fairy cakes are plain and dull, cupcakes are over sweet and dull....much prefer muffins and cookies

IMO it depends completely on the how good/sweet the icing is. If it is a whipped chocolate ganache then pile it on. Ditto a not overly sweet cream cheese one. If it is 'buttercream' made with vegetable fat I'd rather just scrape the crap in the bin and just eat the cake.

Thanks for asking slimjim

I am a jewellery tutor, and my main income is children's birthday parties
SO
I go to fetes and show children how to make jewellery in the hope that their Mums will book a birthday party with 'that nice jewellery lady'

I never buy cupcakes (ick)
The aloe Vera ladies always look a bit wistful as well
So do the Usborne Books sellers

I agree OP. i have purchased ready made
Ones from waitrose which are half sugar and half cake.

They look good though.

YANBU - they are big fairy cakes with half a pound of sickly buttery icing on.

The DC insist that I make them though

I am thoroughly sick of cupcakes.

If I see another cupcake I don't think I can be held responsible for what I do to it.

I prefer muffins (sweet not savory). Made some brownie cupcakes at the weekend from a recipe in a cookery magazine. Weird but rather nice. Neither cupcake nor brownie in my book (buttery chocolate, with cocoa and chocolate chunks, so what's not to like?).

My way of divining is either to ask the maker or to just taste it and scrape the goo off. If I don't like the frosting, it is a good bet I won't like the cake either because I find many American cakes (desserts, pastries, ice-cream, bread, sauces etc) too sweet too, especially commercial ones.

The japanese bakeries here tend to make theirs less sweet and often use cream instead of frosting so that is a good bet. You can often tell by looking at them, how stiff the icing is, how perfectly it pipes, how white it is etc. Real butter buttercream has a yellow tinge, even when coloured it often looks different. Cream cheese frosting with a lot of cream cheese looks different too. Lastly, check the ingredients or ask what it is frosted with. Supermarket ones here I don't eat. Chocolate frosting looks very different from whipped ganache.

I used to know them as fairycakes until they were americanised, but i do enjoy making them & the dc love them.
Yanbu about the name though