Top 20 HiaC Creations of 2012

A big thank you and Happy New Year 2013 to all my customers; thank you for making 2012 so successful and giving me some fab cakes to take on.

Here are my Top 20 Creations of 2012.





20. Pretty Spring Cupcake Bouquet. I never tire of making these cupcake bouquets; they always come out differently and put a smile on the recipient's face. They make a really unique gift and are the perfect alternative to flowers.











19. Loveable Bugs! I love making these cute little bugs cupcakes. They've been a popular design for 2012 and I look forward to making more of them.















18. Tea for One. Individual afternoon tea trays complete with a slice of cake - all to yourself. Another popular design which can be done in any colour combination and great for all occasions. These were made for a Diamond Wedding Anniversary, hence the little diamonds atop the slices of cake.



17. Zoo Animals Cake. I have taken on a lot more large celebration cakes this year and look forward to doing even more next year. This birthday cake was for 2 little boys who were having a joint party at Willows Farm, St Albans. I'm not sure they'd see many of these animals there though!







16. Grandma's 90th Birthday Cake. I made this cake and cupcake tower for my grandma who turned 90 in December - she's a big fan of my cakes and is an inspiration to me. Here she is on her sofa with all her electronic gadgets!









15. Summer Wedding Cupcake Tower. This wedding tower is made up of a variety of cocktail and summer flavoured cupcakes. The design was quite simple but all together looked really fresh and perfect for a Summer Wedding.



















14. Sophie and Glen's 4 Split Tier Buttercream Swirl Wedding Cake. This was probably my most challenging cake of the year as I had to transport it to the Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf and then assemble it on the dance floor but, I hope you'll agree, the end result was worth it!





13. Halloween Designs 2012. I always love making Halloween cupcakes and cakes because there are so many different designs you can do for it. Here are just a few of them.











12. Mothers Day 2012. I had lots of orders for these designs and I had a lot of fun designing them. Flowers are so versatile; they are perfect for cupcakes!





11. Diamond Jubilee Cupcakes. How can I not include these in my Top 20 of 2012?! 2012 was such a great year for us and I was thrilled to do these designs to reflect that.







10. Doc Mcstuffins Birthday Cake - 10in Vanilla cake with Doc Mcstuffins and friends on for Amiya's 2nd Birthday.









9. Christmas Designs 2012 - Traditional Christmas Fruit Cake and some of my cupcake designs. Always love Christmas!







8. Raa Raa the Noisy Lion Giant Cupcake. Childrens' birthday cakes are always a lot of fun to make as they have such imaginative characters and themes. They are perfect as giant cupcakes!







7. Robyn and Mark's Lilac Rose Cupcake Tower. I don't usually do tiered wedding cakes so this was a first as they were adamant that they wanted me to do their cake! I was very pleased with how it turned out and had lots of compliments on it.







6. Alice in Wonderland cupcakes. These were made for one of my regular customers who loves Alice in Wonderland - they are great for cakes as there are so many ways to make them.







5. Gruffalo Cupcakes. More children's cupcakes. I do really love making children's cakes! I'd like to do more please :)







4. Waybuloo Cake. Until I was asked to do these (like many children's tv shows), I'd never heard of the Waybuloos. Now I've made lots of them! 8in vanilla cake







3. Muppets Cupcakes. This is the third lot of muppets cupcakes I made this year and I want to make more. They are such fun characters to make and not only that, but I made them as samples for the judges of Flare 2012, the Entrepreneurial Contest run by the University of Hertfordshire, which I subsequently won. So I think I owe the muppets for that :)







2. Flare Mini Cupcakes. Now from first look, these may not seem that exciting but this photo was taken just before the Flare Award Ceremony where I found out I'd won the Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 and the grand prize of £10,000 to help with my business so it's very important to me and is one of my proudest moments of 2012!





1. My Harry Potter Sorting Hat. This was made of 4 cakes; coconut, vanilla, chocolate and lemon. It was my most 'liked' and most shared cake of 2012 on Facebook so really should be top of the cakes. I can't wait to see what cake designs I get to make in 2013! Thanks again everyone and see you soon.

New York, New York: Part One - Carlo's Bakery

In September I took a trip to New York to try out some of the cupcake bakeries and source new ideas/flavours. Here's a quick round up of where I went and what I tasted!

 The first place we visited was Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey which is about a 20 minute bus journey from Times Square, NYC. As a big fan of Cake Boss, Carlo's Bakery was first on my list and we were very lucky as we only had to wait 45 minutes. This may seem a long time but I had read horror stories of people having to queue for 3hrs before they even got in to the bakery! We went on a rainy Friday morning at about 11am (by the time we arrived) so got straight into the bakery with no long queues outside.        

    

 The counters were full of delicious, brightly coloured cakes and cookies, from cupcakes to biscotti and layer cakes with fresh fruit on them. As much as I wanted to buy something of everything, I thought I had better restrain myself so just went with the classics - a Red Velvet Cupcake, some amaretti biscuits, a cannoli and lobster tail.


 

The cupcake was moist and had a yummy cream cheese frosting. The lobster tail was delicious but the cannoli was a bit rich for me and wasn't keen on the deep fried shell! I did find, whilst across the pond, that the cupcakes in America (as I found whilst in Florida) are much heavier than mine and the cake is a denser consistency which kind of stick when you tear them apart unlike mine which are light and a bit crumblier. I'm not sure if it's to do with the flour or just the different recipes. They are definitely sweeter! And of course, we had to take a photo outside the front with our purchases!

   

 Next post : Magnolia Bakery and Crumbs Bake Shop!

Halloween!

It's been a while since I updated the blog as it's been busy, busy at the Heaven is a Cupcake HQ but I thought i'd share some Halloween designs and flavours. Halloween Cupcakes start from just £2.00 each with a minimum of 6 per flavour.

Halloween Cupcake Flavours

Vanillarrrrgh

Chocohate

Caramel Apple

Blood Velvet

Oreo Spider

Vampire Bite (Chilli Chocolate)

Happy Halloween!

Local Gem!

Apologies for the radio silence over the last couple of months. The problem with running your own business is that you don't have a lot of spare time and in my spare time I tend to spend it sleeping or catching up on admin so it doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging. But, I will try to be better!

Great news, I have been nominated for the Local Gem award in the St Albans Food and Drink Awards for the 3rd year and a row! But I need your help to win.

Please take a few minutes to vote for Heaven is a Cupcake for Local Gem. And if you're not sure why, then just check out my Facebook page to see some of my latest creations!

Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 - Flare Awards

In case you haven't been following me on Facebook or Twitter; I am proud to announce (albeit a little late!) that I have won the University of Hertfordshire's Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Award.





In October 2011 I entered the competition and was put through my paces in a 'Dragon's Den' style contest. I had to submit a 15 page business plan with my 'idea' which was, of course, to further develop and improve on the success of Heaven is a Cupcake. 178 people entered and I got through to the final 7. We then had to attend several boot camps in order to prepare for a 3 minute pitch followed by 5 minutes of Q&A in front of the judges.

The moment my name was announced! Photo by Pete Stevens

I spent 2 weeks preparing my pitch and a lot of effort and passion went into it. I am thrilled to say that I won and the judges all said how well I did and that they could see the work I had put into Heaven is a Cupcake and that they were confident it would continue to thrive.

I am looking forward to making lots of improvements to Heaven is a Cupcake. Watch this space for updates!

Photo by Pete Stevens

Happy 2nd Birthday Heaven is a Cupcake

Today is Heaven is a Cupcake's 2nd Birthday. So to celebrate I thought I would write an entry to show where Heaven is a Cupcake came from and how we have grown into the thriving business we are now! I say 'we', it's still just me (Lucy) but I have such a good family behind Heaven is a Cupcake (those who literally are family/friends as well as my amazing customer base) that I consider it to be 'we' as much as it is 'I'. After all, if it weren't for my fabulous customers there would be no Heaven is a Cupcake. It would just be me, eating far too much cake (I do that anyway!)

So before I get into where we came from I'd like to say a big thank you to all my customers and friends. Particularly to my loyal customers who come to all my markets and have been really supportive of me over the last year or two; you have all given me so many opportunities and challenges so THANK YOU! Now a thank you to someone who I owe a lot to, my mum! And I like to think I inspired her to start making cakes too because one month before my first birthday she attended a sugarcraft course and then made her very first cake, my first birthday cake!

Mum's First Cake -My 1st Birthday, November 1986

And over the years she made practically every single one of our Birthday cakes up until the age of 18 when we all got too busy for things like making cakes! I used to love making cakes with her (and still do, although now I'm starting to teach her things!) and one of my favourite cakes that she made me was my 5th birthday cake and it probably is still my favourite cake... a buttercream castle cake. Ever since I was little, I've loved buttercream; I used to eat the buttercream and leave the cake! So this was a big hit as it was covered in buttercream and also yummy sweets.  

My 5th Birthday Cake - November 1990

These photos are both taken from a scrapbook my mum has kept for the past 26 years and I used to sit and flick through the photos never even imagining I could do it. I always used to think 'I wish I could do that.' When I was 15 I was given the task of having to make a cake for my GCSE food technology and I knew straight away I wanted to make the buttercream castle cake. Now, it didn't quite turn out how I wanted it to...but it tasted good!

 

My first cake, 2001

I almost gave up after that! I stuck to making things like fairy cakes and rock cakes and just baked occasionally as a hobby whilst planning my career as an actress! I then went to university and studied English Literature and in my final year, I attempted another castle cake (as you can see I like castle cakes!) for my friend Scott. Again, not my greatest cake but it is one of my favourites as it was a lot of fun to make and still tasted yummy! It also used a lot of the tricks my mum used which I loved as a kid - coconut grass, jelly water, lots of buttercream. But I think my favourite thing has to be the hippos - every good castle cake should have hippos ;)

Scott's Castle Cake, 2008

I then went on to do my Masters and once that was finished in December 2010 I desperately needed a break from studying. So I went off to America and there I made cupcakes! Lots of cupcakes! I kept finding more and more gadgets/toppings and exciting new things for cupcakes which I didn't even knew existed. These were my first 'cupcakes'. Yes, I'd made fairy cakes and small cupcakes but I didn't even know you could get these larger sized cases.

My first cupcakes, Feb 2010

As you can see, I didn't bother with any of that piping rubbish or hand made decorations! 2 months later, I started up Heaven is a Cupcake. I created a facebook page and then the orders began to come in. I thought it would be a good way to earn some money whilst I looked for a teaching assistant job but I never got that far... This was the first order I received that was from someone I didn't know, a box of baby themed cupcakes to go to Gorhambury Manor, St Albans (a good first order I think!)

First Bespoke Order from an unknown, August 2010

After being in business for 6 months I won the 2010 Local Gem Award in the St Albans Food and Drink Festival. And from there it has just snowballed! Now I work full time 6-7 days a week and I couldn't be happier. You can see how far I've come from the very first cupcakes I made to my most recent cupcakes...

Wedding Cupcake Samples, April 2012

And I even got to do another castle cake, an improvement on my first one I think you'll agree!

So thank you again to everyone who has helped make Heaven is a Cupcake what it is today and here's to another exciting year!

Happy cupcaking :)

Lucy x

Easter Time

Easter Cupcakes 2012

This year why not give something a little different for Easter? Here at Heaven is a Cupcake we are constantly coming up with new designs and flavours so why not drop us a line to discuss your bespoke Easter requirements.

Alternatively, check out these fab designs we have on offer...

Easter Gift Box of 4 Classic Cupcakes £10.00

Easter Spring Cupcakes - Chicks and Bunnies £18 for 6 or £34 for 12 (includes Easter cupcake wrappers. without wrappers - £15 for 6 or £29 for 12)

Divine Cupcakes - £2.00 each, 6 per flavour: Carrot, Double Chocolate Easter Nest, Marble Lindt Bunny and Chocolate Orange.

Mini Cupcake Egg Boxes - just £5 complete with Easter Sticker designs by Joanne Shaw Designs www.joanneshawdesigns.com

Happy Easter everyone!