please empty your brain below
Is this the next venture by the people behind Water Chariots?

Tony | 06.10.12 - 7:24 a.m. | #

No - in the water chariot version you pay 90 quid and are chauffeured from shop to shop in a wheel barrow.

Dan | 06.10.12 - 7:31 a.m. | #

Like: seriously, wow. Rip-off city.

Dominic | 06.10.12 - 7:51 a.m. | #

I can't see the problem - business and customers deserve each other. At least the business is unlikely to go bust as they won't have any running costs....

Ham | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 7:59 a.m. | #

Hang on - I just clicked, and it just clicked. Sheer brilliance. It's a "Gift Experiece". So, the spender and the user of the service are two separate people, the value doesn't come into it. The buyer feels good because they have found a unique and unusual gift for a suitably impressive sum. The recipient thinks how much the giver cares for them, and wanders round the stores gorging themselves on single cupcakes in their own time. Sheer brilliance.

Ham | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 8:03 a.m. | #

OMG!!! What next!?
But as regards cup cakes, my favourites were - and I guess always will be - the orange and lemon ones.
There was a real, well, 'anticipation' in trying to peel the casing back without tearing it, so as to be able to eat it without bits of paper stuck round the edge.
The chocolate ones were, er, OK.
Hmmm: I guess I could create a list of my five top supermarkets, if people wanted to pay me thirty quid to take them on a tour of them

RogerW | 06.10.12 - 8:24 a.m. | #

I kind of agree with Ham, re the gift experience - I can imagine several of my friends enjoying this - but not on their own, surely? So you'd have to buy a ticket for yourself too, and then it becomes a pricey old day out... for cake.

For that price I'd take them to tea at the Ritz. The cakes there are nice, not nearly as heaving with icing as those cupcakes (I've had one, and never again) and you get a cup of tea and a sarnie as well.

And I'm still a bit stunned they didn't include a travelcard...

Mighty mouse | 06.10.12 - 8:29 a.m. | #

What's next are "cake-pops". These are small round cakes on a stick, covered in chocolate and decorated. £1.95 in Waitrose and about 20% of the amount of cake in a cupcake.

Dave | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 8:55 a.m. | #

I love cupcakes, but those modern creations just don't do it for me. They are uber-expensive and there is generally more sickly icing than cake. Plus, the flavours are just too 'try hard'. Ironically, this post happened on a day when I was trying to buy an old fashioned celebration cake, a sponge with piped icing, jam and cream and a simple message on it. I finally found one somewhere, but not after traversing local suburbs where I found cakes shaped like boxes, shoes, shells, Sponge Bob Wossname, Bart Simpson, etc etc, all substandard cake covered with garish coloured hard icing that looks like play doh. And, at price. Judging by most creations they were for weddings or children's parties. What happened to the old fashioned home-made cake with icing of the child's choice and the requisite number of candles? But of course the parents who buy these creations, engaged as they are in a war of one-up-parent-ship with little Sproggy's friends' parents are the first to bitch and moan about how poor 'working families' are these days'.

Antipodean | 06.10.12 - 9:28 a.m. | #

I like a cupcake but the price per gram for the cake has always put me off. For the price of two cupcakes in a supermarket, I could buy a quite nice normal size sponge cake. So I've nearly always resisted.

I also think you'll find that the posh cupcake places charge considerably more than £2.50.

I just can't justify spending a fiver for a something that will be finished in two or three bites.

Rational Plan | 06.10.12 - 9:35 a.m. | #

Has DG finally given in to a marketing email?

Steve | 06.10.12 - 9:35 a.m. | #

@Antipodean - I think those old-fashioned home-made cakes are still made at home, the old fashioned way...

If you want cake, move to the country and make friends with your local WI

disgruntled | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 9:36 a.m. | #

Well as every fool kno sugar is addictive and Brits have the sweetest teeth in the world. Cake - there's hardly any in the things called 'cupcake'. I prefer an nice homemade American style muffin meself.

B | 06.10.12 - 10:04 a.m. | #

Cupcake: removes the guilt out of eating cake by making the cake tiny and cute.
Voucher: removes the guilt out of spending money by separating the purchase from the actual parting of cash.
It doesn't matter than the icing is, like, pure glucose, and that voucher are sometimes quite expensive.
It's only natural that cupcake and vouchers go often together!

Personally, I don't fancy either. But perhaps I'll fall for the next fad. Tiny marzipan fruit maybe?

barbara jacob | 06.10.12 - 10:32 a.m. | #

By the way, I've always wanted to try the German-Hungarian cake called "tree cake", "chimney cake" or, less inspiringly, "spit cake" - and no, you can't find that in London. At least I haven't managed so far; it's like boba tea until three years ago.
I used to think you could find everything in London, tsk tsk :)

barbara jacob | 06.10.12 - 10:39 a.m. | #

I agree - a complete rip-off. Until reading further down, I thought that a "tour" was indeed a tour - perhaps around a cake "factory".

I don't like these sort of cup cakes and I've yet to buy one. They're ridiculouly overpriced bits of rubbish that are just a fad. Why is it that they have to use the name of a well known piece of confectionary that is something totally different instead of giving it a new name.z

The same has happened with muffins. A muffin has always been a crumpet-like item not a fancy sponge that we've always called a bun or fairy cake. Are the current cup cakes and muffins American imports?

For me a proper cupcake will always be that that others have described – the sponge bun with the solid icing on top. The common ones were orange and lemon (usually two of each in a box) or strawberry or chocolate. I think I’ve even had a caramel flavoured one. Sadly, many of the older types of cakes that we all loved have disappeared – remember the boxes of Lyons cakes, fruit pies and mini swiss rolls?

A lot of cakes seen in corner shops and elsewhere these days seems to be long life (with a sell by date many months ahead) nondescript tasteless pap, no doubt imported from China!

Roger | 06.10.12 - 10:49 a.m. | #

@ Steve - I don't think "give in" is quite the term. I suspect it might be "so shocked about the rip off nature of the offer that only a DG on line critique will suffice".

These days if you want a half decent cake then learn to make it yourself. Most cakes we remember from childhood are pretty easy to make and at least you know what's in them.

I don't understand the hype about cupcakes at all. There are endless TV programmes about them and the oversized egos who make them on satellite TV. It's all rather bizarre.

PC | 06.10.12 - 11:21 a.m. | #

http://dailymash.shotdeadinthehead.com/product_view.aspx?pid=4456

Dave | 06.10.12 - 11:50 a.m. | #

@disgruntled Yep, or the Country Women's Association as they are known here. What I really needed was an old-fashioned cake shop. The country is a bit far to travel though. Although I now have a craving for the world's best vanilla slice, AKA 'snot block' at the best country bakery in the Antipodes.

Antipodean | 06.10.12 - 12:44 p.m. | #

This oft-used quote seems to apply to this offer: "There's a sucker born every minute."

Mary | 06.10.12 - 12:55 p.m. | #

I blame the TV show Sex and the City for the cupcake hype. The last time I was in NYC my wife wanted to go to Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker st.

Michael in the Netherlands | 06.10.12 - 2:09 p.m. | #

My wife and I did a chocolate walk last time we were in Paris, cost about £15 a head, was proper guided walk with tastings at each stop (around 1/2 dozen, and some posh ones at that). If this is London's equivalent then the jokes on us!

http://www.paris-walks.com/chocolate-walk.html

SJM | 06.10.12 - 3:14 p.m. | #

Anyone with strong views about the croissant? Or ciabatta vs baguette?

Thank you for today's post, DG. It's niche and a bit Watchdog-like but funny and pleasantly frivolous.

barbara jacob | 06.10.12 - 3:17 p.m. | #

I'd quite like a sugar rush about now.

Albert | 06.10.12 - 3:17 p.m. | #

Barbara, when you say Chimney Cake do you mean this sort of thing? -

http://www.chimneycakeisland.com/

If so, I had some in London the other week from a stall at a food festival in Battersea Park!

David | 06.10.12 - 5:51 p.m. | #

@David, yes, this is the cake I'm looking for. Thanks a lot for the tip!

barbara jacob | 06.10.12 - 6:04 p.m. | #

Yesterday, here in Cornwall, I spent the morning with my Mum, manning her Women's Institute stall at the town's monthly market. The WI ladies had to be persuaded to price up the single fairy cakes to 50p each: cakes made with eggs from the members' own flocks (baking being a popular way of using up seasonal gluts, as sponge cakes freeze well). They also sold half and whole cakes - jam, coffee/walnut, lemon drizzle - at absurdly low prices, considering what such things of far the shops.

Everything sold and the fairy cake I had was delicious. I don't have a sweet tooth and never liked "shop" cake like Mr Kipling because they're always too sweet (to hide the taste of industrial ingredients, I suspect). These fashionably piled-high cupcakes have never appealed for the same reasons. Whereas the WI fairy cakes, made with care and skill, were thoroughly enjoyable and worth at least twice the price.

I've also noticed this cupcake craze imported from the USA, and I wouldn't be surprised if that appalling SATC telly programme had something to do with it. That and this ridiculous "tour" (from Primrose Hill to Covent Garden - what a f***ing cliche) is to me a further dismaying sign that the collective brains of a certain type of urban/suburban, thirty-something, £-secure (if not affluent), middle-class, lifestyle-magazine-following, mentally resource-free, terminally bored women are disintegrating at quite a rate.
(FWIW I'm F, lower-class, broke, rural, a graduate/professional [now disabled and unable to work at my chosen career or obtain work of any sort], 40s, - and by turns bewildered, horrified, contemptuous and amused at what is marketed as "lifestyle for women" and as unceasingly portrayed and purveyed by women's mags, the Daily Mail, certain TV channels etc etc).

Topv | 06.10.12 - 7:04 p.m. | #

In-smegging-credible. You've almost got to admire their nerve. It makes all the other other marketing morons look like amateurs. Where they would probably offer you a voucher for £10 in order to get goods worth £12.50, these guys offer you a £12.50 voucher for £34.50. Still, it seems to have worked for Apple....

Geraldo | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 7:14 p.m. | #

You do realise that you're all mugs for commenting on a post so clearly designed to bait a larger-than-normal reaction so that DG can crow about what asinine topics attract views and comments in tomorrow's post, don't you?

Seriously, he does exactly that at least twice a year. (Ironically, the most famous example featured doughnuts.) So soon after the 'Not in Service' thing, you really ought to have learned your lesson.

swirlythingy | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 8:44 p.m. | #

@Swirlything: Haha that comment reveals far more about you than it does about DG.

Geraldo | Homepage | 06.10.12 - 8:56 p.m. | #

'Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master lttei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."'

Don't discount the cupcake.

barbara jacob | 06.10.12 - 9:59 p.m. | #

I was pleased to see that amongst their terms and conditions is: 'This website uses cookies'. We wouldn't want them to waste cupcakes.

Peter | 06.10.12 - 10:55 p.m. | #

It stands to reason DG will get lots of comments when he blogs about food. I eat, therefore I am.

GAA | 06.10.12 - 11:00 p.m. | #

The biggest problem I have with this new-fangled trendy cupcakes is how you are supposed to eat them. As the pictures shows it's almost impossible to get a mouthful of both cake and icing at the same time.

Whiff | 07.10.12 - 8:31 a.m. | #

People....your just jealous that you didn't think of it first! To be honest, any gift experience is a bit of a rip off and yes this may be a bit expensive, but you get more than a cupcake for your £34 from what I can see! I know loads of people who would LOVE this! P.s I can sooo get icing and sponge in one bite....practice makes perfect!

CheekyM | 07.10.12 - 10:05 a.m. | #

Really cake making isn't difficult at all. It isn't even particularly time consuming. You can make some wonderful fairy cakes at home (none of this transatlantic cupcake nonsense for me).

Richard | Homepage | 07.10.12 - 10:11 a.m. | #

I would comment further, but my jaw is still on the ground after reading the price!

CornishCockney | 07.10.12 - 10:07 p.m. | #

@Geraldo: What does it reveal about me?

swirlythingy | Homepage | 08.10.12 - 2:00 a.m. | #

For those of you that want to make the real thing, I see that Poundland have a halloween cupcake kit, complete with halloween transfers!

Roger | 09.10.12 - 12:16 p.m. | #











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