Less is more.

Cupcakes needn’t be all about cream and gooey icing to be a success. There is something inexplicably delicious about biting into soft sponge to find zingy fruity flavours like peaches and raspberries, or the smoothness of caramalised banana surrounding your taste buds. And of course there is always the slightly less sinful feeling when indulging, as the cupcake contains fruit and therefore must be good for you.

The problem I find though is when adding the fruit of the moment into your lovingly prepared cupcake mixture, there never looks to be enough fruit in the recipe. So you add a few more strawberries, or a few more slices of banana thinking that when you bite into the warm treat, the more fruit, the better.

Stop.

More fruit isn’t better in cookery, a lesson I found out when I over-enthusiastically added double the quantity of banana to my first batch of banana cupcakes, thinking that ten slices was just not going to cut it. In fact, less really in more in this instance as with fruit, there comes liquid, and as all good bakers will know, even if you are not going to follow a recipe, you should obey the basic ingredient ratio of dry:wet.

So as my much anticipated super duper bananary cupcakes emerged from the oven, I met them with distress to find that their middles had all sunk.

In this instance, it wasn’t so much of a failure as you might think; I loaded the middles up with toffee cream and topped them with a smidge of vanilla icing and produced a delicious batch of ooey gooey bananaramas, but for future fruit cupcakes I’ll try to hold back.

Cupcakes - an individual treat.

The joy of cupcakes, and believe me there is a real sense of joy when it comes to a cupcakes, is their size and shape. No matter how beautiful a grand birthday cake or three tiered wedding cake may look to begin with, once it has been hacked into equal size portions by an inexpert hand, all cake will look the same; sponge, filling, sponge, icing. The cake may have been handled, extra plates, napkins and cutlery are needed, and there is always that stretching gap between cutting the cake and serving it that will leave people wondering just what is happening to it in the kitchen.

Then, on arrival of their much-awaited slice, people will either munch it quickly and come looking for more, or they will try and stash their plate in the foliage of the nearest pot plant when they see that their slice has no jam, or too much marzipan or a solid chunk of vanilla sponge that just puts them off totally.

From an early age we are all programmed to want more; more toys, more money, more space, more from life…more cake. So as the revered celebration sponge is winging its way to you, you will almost undoubtedly steal a quick glance at your neighbours slice to see how yours ranks. Larger, and you’ll tuck in with a satisfying smirk on your face, smaller, and you will feel hard done by.

As a caterer this is a tricky and long-winded procedure to undertake; however, the arrival of the Cupcake solves all our problems. Equal sizes, equal icing, equal filling, no fiddly portion cutting and it always looks good from first sight to first mouthful. It is hygienic as each cake is handled by a wrapper and it goes well with summer fruits and a dollop of ice cream to turn a tasty treat into a satisfying dessert.

There is something so alluring about seeing a hundred cupcakes rather than one big lump of cake. Maybe it appears more delicate, maybe it is the individuality of it – there is no sharing with a cupcake, it is all yours; maybe it is the repetitive pattern, the personal selection, the individual treat or the definitive size – you cannot keep cutting off thin slivers of cake (imagining that they don’t count as it isn’t a whole slice), when it’s gone it’s gone, (unless of course you decide that two cupcakes is justifiable).

The cupcake is the new tray bake, so whenever your next celebration may be, give the cupcake a chance.

For delicious cupcakes visit www.exquisitecakecompany.com