Top Tips: Cupcake Innovation

With more and more cupcake & cake companies emerging every day it is important to make sure you keep innovating and don't find yourself seeking more than inspiration from other cakers. One of the things I pride myself in, and which I hope comes across from not just my blogging but my social networking and products themselves, is my cupcake innovation. By this, I mean that I am always seeking to put out products and flavours that are unique and have my own 'Heaven is a Cupcake' stamp on them. There is nothing wrong with seeking inspiration from others and in fact I encourage other bakers to network and chat with eachother - I have met many great cakers through my blog, twitter and facebook but it is important not to copy them exactly as this can harm your business and well, nobody wants to be the same as everyone else!

For example, my 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' cupcakes have quickly become my signature cupcake and are very popular amongst by facebook followers & customers. I am, of course, not the only person to do rainbow cake but I've not seen many cake companies themselves doing the same kind of cupcakes and the rainbow icing.

It's good to do the 'classic' flavours, as I call them, such as Vanilla, Chocolate, Lemon etc. but it's also good to develop your own recipes and flavours. My Apple Strudel cupcake was inspired my Oma who hailed from a tiny village in Southern Austria where home baking was an important part of everyday life. She passed away in March but I am pleased that her heritage and memory lives on through me and that she was able to taste (and put her stamp of approval!) on my apple strudel cupcakes.

Another of my original recipes which I developed through my love of milkshakes are the Cupshake range - so far banana, strawberry and chocolate milkshake flavours. My strawberry cupshake recently won the 'Strawberry Tea Recipe Competition' on http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/

As well as keep my recipes original, I like to make sure that I am always producing new designs and bespoke cupcakes - unique and delicious, that's my motto! A year a go I started making floral cupcakes and had seen some beautiful cupcake bouquets in pots but I wanted to do something a bit different, so took my inspiration from flower bouquets themselves. This led to my popular cupcake bouquet baskets...                 

 

I have since seen other companies doing these so it must mean that they are good ;) But I am pleased to say that I hadn't seen anyone doing them before hand.

New products

As well as continually produce unique flavours and designs for my cupcake, I am constantly expanding and improving my product range. You can NEVER stop improving and learning  new techniques, anyone that says otherwise is either very naive or lying!

Another of my products influenced by my Austrian heritage are these mini Gugelhupfs...

And I have LOTS of other ideas so stay tuned and finally, don't be one of those cupcake companies who is the same as everyone else - keep innovating and keep being you.

Top Tips: Food Photography

I don't post recipes of my own on here very often now due to some people not being able to have their own ideas, so I thought I'd start posting a kind of cupcake top tips about how to best improve your own cakes and in this case, any kind of food really!

My first top tip focusses on the way you take photos of your products, and this really can be applied to any product: Take the time to take good photos!

This is one of the easiest things to get right and yet one of the things I see so many businesses (cupcake or otherwise) getting wrong. Now, I am by no means an expert in taking photos but alongside baking it is probably one of my biggest hobbies. Before I started taking photos of all my cupcakes, I would take photos of EVERYTHING (and still do!) so I've had a lot of practice of seeing what looks best and which settings to use.

So here are a few of my top tips for taking good photos of cakes/food. Firstly, take photos in front of a clean, blank background. Don't take it next to a mixer, or with flour all over the place. If you have a shop, designate a photo taking area. This may seem like an obvious thing but so often I see businesses uploading photos of their cakes with lots of other equipment in the photos. You want to make sure your product is the centre of attention and not have any other distractions. If your products don't look good, people won't want to eat them. Anyone that says otherwise is wrong! The aesthetic appeal of food is just as, if not more, important as the taste (but obviously the taste has to be good otherwise they won't come back!)

Here I've just used a plain, clean teatowel and the plain wall in the background to take a photo against. Light colours are best! Secondly, always use natural light whereever possible and don't take a photo in a dark place. These are all things you can do with a simple camera.

  

The first photo was taken in a dark area, whereas the second photo was taken outside in nice natural light. And it makes all the difference!

The great thing about digital cameras is that you can take hundreds of photos and not waste any film. So take lots and from different angles, different rooms, different backgrounds - see what works best. Don't put out bad quality photos, it just makes your product look bad. If you are serious about your business I would recommend investing in a good camera, it doesn't necessarily have to be top of the range but you can get a good camera with lots of easy to use features for a relatively low price now. I have a Canon 500d and I love it :)

I leave you with this photo of my icecream cone cupcakes. I hope this blog was helpful!

Busiest week yet!

Hello cupcakers!

It has been an extremely busy week so I thought I'd share with you some of my latest orders and the biggest challenges I've faced yet as a home baker and they all happened in the same week - typical!

On Saturday 6th of August I had a wedding order to fulfil for Hanh and Alex who were having their wedding reception at the beautiful St Michael's Manor in St Albans. They had a cupcake tower of vanilla and lemon cupcakes topped with rose swirls and individual handmade roses. Their top tier cake was made by a family member and finished off their tower beautifully.

Here are a few snaps of the finished product.

I really loved the colours of these and the wrappers in particular - they are very popular wedding wrappers!

My next wedding and my biggest challenge yet was on Thursday 11th August, again at the lovely St Michael's Manor and was for Binanti and Darren. Now, originally Binanti asked if I could do her cupcake favours and of course I was very happy to, but she was having trouble finding someone to do her wedding cake. It seemed there weren't many cakers willing to make a piped rose swirl cake! So I said that I would have a go at doing her a sample cake and she could decide if it was what she wanted. I made it very clear that I've never done that sort of thing before but she was desperate! I made her the sample cake ( a vanilla pound cake with vanilla buttercream) and the happy couple were thrilled with it, I'm pleased to say. So she put her faith in me and I'm pleased to say all the hard work paid off....

Thank you to Binanti and Darren for having faith in me! And I'm very glad you weren't disappointed. Now amongst these wedding orders, I was also planning my sister's 30th Birthday Cake (a 3 tiered wonky cake, getting ready for my Saturday market in the St Albans town hall (sold out again!) AND fulfilling all my other regular orders for birthdays/anniversaries/cravings! So as you can see, I didn't get much time to rest (which is great for business, but not so great for my M.E.) luckily I have had the day off today...well sort of, I still have a sample box to make later and have been answering emails/sorting photos all day but in comparison to last week - it's a day off.

I will leave you with a collage of some of last week's orders. The rest have been uploaded onto my Facebook page . Also want to say a very quick thank you to everyone who has been so supportive to me and my business. You guys are fab so thank you :D

Welcome to Miami! HIAC Does Florida Pt2

Sorry about the gap between posts, still jetlagged ;) Originally we were going to stay in Miami for 2 nights after Key Largo but we decided to go to Key West instead and just swing by Miami on the way to the airport. We will definitely have to go back to Florida as there are so many places to go and things to do that we couldn't possibly fit it all in in the time we had and also because, y'know - it's awesome!

So our next stop on the cupcake tour was The Buttercream Cupcake and Coffee Shop. It was a very sweet shop on Sunset Drive and the cupcakes were all beautifully presented. They had a range of flavours which were mostly traditional such as Vanilla, Choc, Choc-Orange, Choc-Vanilla etc but also some more 'interesting' flavours like Pistachio (which I bought) and Lime. As we were planning on visiting another cupcake shop afterwards and due to the fact we were flying home that evening, I settled on just 2 cupcakes - Pistachio and Red Velvet. As you can see, the display was FULL of cupcakes (just what you'd expect from a cupcake shop, but believe me I've seen some recently who shall rename nameless which was less than full and very disappointing!!)

Outside the store with my recent purchases. Not a good pic of me but focus on the shop ;)

Both the cakes were very light and because I was so full from eating the next cupcakes, they actually survived the 9 hr flight home as well. I liked the pistachio one best because I *think* the Red Velvet one had buttercream on whereas I prefer cream cheese on mine. However, the sponge was light and red velvety and it was red! One of the things I've noticed about some cupcakeries over here is that they just can't get Red Velvet ones right. It is tough and not one of the easiest to do but one thing that it must be is RED. I saw a Red Velvet cupcake this week that was brown...Easiest part to get right, right? Apparently not!

Next up was LA Sweets  and I think this was my favourite cupcakery of the tour (just check out that homepage!) It was really roomy and light inside and I loved the display. Their speciality is mini cupcakes - perfect for someone wanting to try as many flavours as possible. But again, I showed restraint and just picked 6! Here I am trying to decide on which ones to go for!

I went with the cupcaker's recommendation for 2: their popular Red Velvet and signature Guava. And I can see why they are their most popular. The red was a really bright red, it was light, fluffy and had cream cheese frosting. Yum! The Guava I had never tried anything like before and it really did taste like Guava. It was a really fruity, tropical taste but not overpoweringly so and even had a tiny piece of Guava on top.

My next favourite was the Chocolate Raspberry, it was divine! Moist, dark chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache and a drizzle of Raspberry sauce. The last 3 I tried were a little sweet for my taste but couldn't fault the sponge - Vanilla with peanut buttercream, Dulche de leche and Caramel Cheesecake.

Don't they look beautiful!?

Here I am with my purchases outside the front

And that concludes my cupcake tour of Florida - thank you Florida, you've been great. I can't wait for my next tour...which state should I visit next?!

Heaven is a Cupcake Does Florida! (Part 1)

It's been a while since I've posted due to having an extremely busy month, my busiest yet in fact! And then to celebrate ;) I went off to Florida with my sister for a much needed holiday. I've never been before and was very excited to go to Disney, Universal (and more importantly, Hogwarts!), go swimming with dolphins and finally visit as many cupcake shops as I a) could possibly find and b) would be allowed to go to before my sister tore me away! So I thought I would share with you my Florida cupcake shop adventure and let you know what I thought.

Our tour started in Orlando where we went to Disney World (we only had one day there so lots to fit in!) and Universal Studios. We both agreed that Universal was our favourite. We felt it was more suited to us, had great rides and of course, had Harry Potter's Wizarding World. Disney World was great because it fulfilled one of my childhood dreams and although we only had one day there, we managed to fit a lot in - visiting both Animal Kingdom and The Magic Kingdom. I would definitely like to go back and experience it in a more laid back setting, perhaps even staying at one of the hotels. DW was also where we spied our first cupcakes! In Animal Kingdom they had zebra cupcakes and in Magic Kingdom they had chocolate and vanilla. And they were huge! Twice the size of my large cupcakes.  I loved the look of the bakery and the sweet shops on Main Street. It was really colourful and fun.

The cupcakes below were from the bakery on CityWalk at Universal. I actually preferred these as they were slightly smaller than the Disney ones and looked more appetizing.

Now onto the proper cupcakeries! Before we left for Florida I sat down with a nice cuppa and spent an enjoyable evening hunting down all the local cupcake shops to our hotel and I came across Sweet! By Good Golly Miss Holly! When I saw Holly, I immediately recognised her from The Food Network's Cupcake Wars so I was very excited that her shop was just half an hour away from our hotel in Orlando. We walked in and immediately I wanted one of each! Luckily they had a wide range of mini flavours which are also bigger than our minis and are enough for "2 and a half bites" (plenty when you want one of each ;) The display looked lovely and there was a really good choice of classic and more unusual flavours.

After much umming and ahhhing I decided to go for 12 minis (I restrained myself). Miss Holly recommends 3 per person which I think is a good average. We had a few on the journey, enough for a bite each of each cupcake then saved a few for later when we fancied them. Here I am taking time to choose the right cupcakes!

I went for a wide variety, some flavours which I like and have had before, others which I had always wanted to try (like the Boston Cream.) And this is what I went for: Carrot, Boston Cream, High Hat, Key Lime, Red Velvet, S'Mores, White Raspberry, White Out, Banana, Cinnamon Swirl, Dulche de leche and Cookies & Cream.

The first one I tried was the red velvet. I found the cake was quite sticky but it was very light and I enjoyed the frosting. My favourites were the boston cream *I loved the filling!*, the high hat and the carrot. I prefer cupcakes that aren't overpoweringly sweet so am a big fan of cream cheese frosting. My least favourites were the white chocolate ones simply because they were a little on the sweet side for my taste but those of you with a sweet tooth would love them. Overall it was a great start to my cupcake tour and I was pleased with the range of flavours available.

Our tour then continued to Naples where we planned to stop at two bakeries on our way from there to the Keys but unfortunately neither opened til 11am and because we'd got up early to visit the Everglades on route they weren't open when we popped by! And we didn't have much luck with any bakeries in the Keys, although I did find a couple of cupcakers that were based online in the area. In Key West, I did have the yummiest banana bread with maple syrup and flamingo crossing tahitian vanilla ice cream at The Flaming Buoy Filet Co. so that made up for the lack of cupcakes!! We also tried the famous Key Lime Pie at our hotel in Key Largo which also did not disappoint but did not top the banana bread.

Next stop...Miami!!

The Heaven is a Cupcake Mobile!

Introducing...the Heaven is a Cupcake Mobile!

Look out for the Heaven is a Cupcake mobile! If you are one of the first 10 people to post a picture of our cupcake mobile out and about and post it on your facebook page and our fan page ( & send us a link so we can see!) then you will get a FREE classic vanilla cupcake. It doesn't count if you take a picture of my car on my drive ;)

Spread the word and happy hunting!

June Update

I can't believe how busy I have been recently. It's just got manic and I haven't had time to sit and blog. But it's great :)

In May I attended the University of Hertfordshire Careers Fair and provided the cupcakes for the networking event. It was a lot of fun and it was great to be back at University again and see what they've done with the new Forum building (the Students Union).

I made over 100 cupcakes for the event and they disappeared in less than 10 minutes!! So a definite success :)

Then last weekend was the St Albans Arts & Crafts Fair in the town Hall and I did a tea party theme where I tried out a new Earl Grey flavour and I must say it was extremely yummy!! It may be my new favourite.


I also had a busy weekend of orders and some really fun themes to tackle. And next weekend is filling up fast too!

Happy Cupcaking!