Phil: I received an excited e-mail from Candice this morning saying “It’s national cupcake week. We have to do something with that !” As ever, she has proved to be at the cutting edge of confectionary news. It is, and you can even visit the website and download some bunting – I shall be wearing nothing else.
But what to do ? I mean this is a week of great importance to the country. Never mind your royal weddings, this is a week devoted to the celebration of something great. Cakes !
Anyway, as regular blog readers will know, we both love cake so this seems to good an opportuinity to miss. Therefore, every day this week, you can look forward to a picture of a cake and some tenuous link to our book. Don’t worry, we’ll do the dangerous work of eating them for you. You just stare at the screen and try not to lick it, or at least not while your boss is looking.
Today’s cake is a cherry bakewell.
This as standard a cake as you get. Some pastry around the edge, nice filling that’s not too sweet, a dash of jam for excitement and then sickly sweet icing on top. Crowned with a cherry, it is a cake that almost everyone can enjoy at any time. Can you ask more than that ?
In the world of literature it is a proper commercial pot-boiler. If Agatha Christie had written a cake, this is what she’s have produced. It’s not something that the culinary elite will like, in fact they will look down their noses at it and head for something featuring raw fish and cat sick because it’s the latest clever thing to be liking. Real people though, will buy it by the ton and enjoy every one.
The cherry bakewell is thus the cake equivalent of The Mousetrap. Goes on forever, always makes people happy.
And that’s very much what we think we have written. It’s not high-brow, we just want to make lots of people happy.
nolanparker 
I’m not convinced by the cherry bakewell being a cupcake! It’s a tart, and the mini-one are a relatively new thing. You should go with your classic butterfly cake or fairy cake – there’s your Mousetrap… 😉
Good point but I’d argue that there is cupcakeness in it’s shape and concept so perhaps it’s some sort of distant relative. The one that gets invited to weddings because you have to but is stood on the far end of the group photo because no one can remember which side of ther family they are.
Genius! A good point well made. It’s the second cousin by marriage of the cake world.
We should stop this foreign interloper and go back to what they really are – fairy cakes. A cupcake (British English: fairy cake; Australian English: patty cake or cup cake) is a small cake designed to serve one person, frequently baked in a small, thin paper or aluminum cup. As with larger cakes, frosting and other cake decorations, such as sprinkles, are common on cupcakes.
Although their origin is unknown, recipes for cupcakes have been printed since at least the late 18th century. The first mention of the cupcake can be traced as far back as 1796, when a recipe notation of “a cake to be baked in small cups” was written in American Cookery by Amelia Simms. The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in “Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats” in 1828 in Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook. So I think the cherry bakewell does not fit the description and all should be consumed as soon as possible.
OK Neil. Will do.
OmmmNommmNommmm. Done !
(You lot are going to hate tomorrows cake 😛 )