Primrose Bakery

I must apologise for my absence but I can't promise I'll get any better at posting these. Sorry! Onto this cupcake! It's a Chocolate and Vanilla Cupcake, the price was over £2.00 but sadly as usual I can't be more specific than that. The Primrose bakery itself was lovely! It's situated off the main piazza of Covent Garden, London. The outside was painted a light yellow and inside was just gorgeous with vintage tables and leather seats. The staff were very friendly, particularly when I had to ask for 15 cake boxes as one of the more bizarre work experience tasks...

Presentation: 5/5 (Cupcake fairyland!!)
I always feel guilty rating presentation because it's almost always very good, but I'm rating this on the presentation of the bakery as well, which really could not be faulted. I tried to take a picture of it but I just looked a bit creepy so decided against it, suffice it to say that it was yellow and pink and girly and just  wonderful. I also really liked the three pronged cake fork... Is that just me...? I also saw a sign in the shop for classes in how to pipe icing which I thought was a really cool idea.

Frosting:4/5 (Pretty)
So as usual it's difficult to remember but in a moment of wisdom I made notes and apparently it tasted  as though they had used too much icing sugar and that the icing wasn't very vanillary, however I suspect that this meant despite the lots of icing sugar the frosting was not too sweet, which is good. Overall I think it had a good texture, was very good frosting, and a very liberal amount of chocolate swirls!

Sponge: 4/5 (Hmmmm...)
I also noted down for this that it was very chocolatey! This is obviously a good thing for a chocolate sponge however, I also noted that this made it a little dry, however the middle was perfect so the edges of the cake were a 3/5 and the middle was a 5/5 so I've compromised the score,which is a shame. I'm not sure what could have been done to change this as I'm clearly not an expert although I imagine it might have something to do with the temperature of the oven? or just that it had been sitting out for a while? these are just guesses. What is important to say is that is was definitely a sponge of very good quality, I always think that cheap sponges are really obvious if not done well, this was none such occasion.

 Overall: 4/5 (I want more!) 
Overall I really liked this cupcake and I really liked the shop. I'd definitely go back. Sadly there wasn't really a lot of seating room, but more than the hummingbird bakery, and they were proper tables not a bar with stools. Hopefully I'll get around to doing more of these, but don't hold your breath!

Sweet Couture

Well it seems I lied. I thought living in a city would give me more opportunity to write about cupcakes, I was wrong - life is far too hectic right now to think of such things however, two weeks ago I found myself with nothing to do and so, like any normal person, I went to Covent Garden, in search of a new bakery and this is what I found. The price I believe was £2.50 and although sadly I do not have a picture of the cake to show you, it was a red velvet cupcake, and it looked pretty much like every red velvet cupcake I've ever tried.

Presentation: 3.5 - 4/5 (Classic)
 So the presentation wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, as I say, it looked pretty similar to the Hummingbird bakery and while this is obviously perfectly acceptable, it was a nice classic looking cupcake, there was nothing exciting about seeing it. (That is once you get past the excitement of it being a cupcake). There was a lot of frosting but for reasons I will discuss later, it needed the frosting. As well as this, the red-ness of this red velvet was lacking. But it was a fairly good effort.

Frosting: 5/5 (Nom nom nom!)
The frosting is probably my favourite part of any red velvet, and while as I'm sure you know if you've read more than one of these posts, I place a very high emphasis on the importance of the cake which is often so poorly neglected, but something about cream cheese frosting is just divine. This didn't disappoint. If anything it was a little heavy but it was so sweet that I really didn't mind ... I'm going soft ...

Sponge: 2/5 (Soft? Me? Never!!)
I was so hopeful for this cupcake but no, the sponge was terrible. It was somehow lumpy, it was not all that red, and the taste was not good. I tried some without the frosting and it tasted like a completely different cake. I think I've used the analogy before of the frosting being a scene stealer, and it really didn't have a difficult time doing so in this case. I don't know what they did but I was not impressed.

Overall: 3/5 (Not going back)
Once again it was the sponge that really let this cake down, I have tried to make red velvets before and I know it's difficult which is why I was impressed by the frosting, but would I go back just for the frosting? No. Onwards with my quest for the best cupcake.