Criteria

Before I upload my first cupcake review (I know, it's taken a while, I apologise) I would like to set out how I will be reviewing different aspects of the cupcake. (Oh yeah, this is serious stuff my friends!)

I would like to point out that these reviews are in no way meant to offend, they are purely my opinions and the purpose of this blog is to share these opinions with you because I love cake and I love talking about cake almost as much as I love eating it. If you have any suggestions of cakes or suggestions for improvements let me know, I'm more than open to change :)

I will give every criteria a mark out of five and then an overall score, I would have done it with stars but I couldn't work out how without just using ***** which just looks like I've edited out obscene language. so 1-2-3-4-5/ 5 it is.

Presentation:

We all love to look at a cupcake and think "Wow! Half of me wants to keep that in a glass cabinet and look at it all day, it will be my pride and joy, but the other half wants to eat that tasty concoction of eggs, sugar, flour, and butter!" this is what we're looking for in the presentation, something unusual, something interesting, but ultimately something that looks tasty.

Frosting:

Here is where we dissect the humble cupcake and look at it's components separately. The frosting is important as it is this that defines it as a cupcake, not a muffin, or a roll, or a bun but a cupcake. Taste and texture are what's important as well as balance with the sponge. For example is the layer of frosting too thick or too thin? This is the sort of thing I'll be looking at.

Cake :

Sponge is - I believe - more important than frosting and is by far the most difficult to get right. I've only tried one cupcake where I've really felt they paid attention to the sponge and I've tried far too many that didn't. I'll again be talking about taste and texture as well as originality; if it's just a plain sponge or if it has chocolate drops in it, peach slices, bit's of strawberry, nuts, rainbows, all that fun stuff will be talked about under the "cake" section.

Overall:

This will be my personal impression of the cake and the overall quality and memorability of the cake.

The moral of the story...

If I feel that there are lessons to be learnt from the cake, eg. an ingenious way to pipe the frosting or a disastrous combination of flavours (like bacon and vanilla - I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but I'd rather not find out) this will be the place to talk about such things.

I hope you enjoy!

S xxx