
You will never have to individually bake for a multitude of dietary requirements again with this one-size-fits-all cake. Photograph: Rob White/The Guardian The all-allergies-considered cupcake Meera Sodha’s blood orange and polenta cakes. They’re rich and indulgent, as a cupcake should be, elevated beyond sickly sweetness with tart cherry jam and refined still more with a ganache icing.

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Nigella is rarely one to miss a trend, although she somehow always dodges the bandwagon. She embraced cupcake fever in 1998 when her second book, the baking bible How to Be a Domestic Goddess came out, with these chocolate cherry cupcakes on the cover. The Bleecker St eatery became an institution, featuring in NYC’s SATC tour, and inspired the opening of equivalent bakeries across the world, such as the Hummingbird in London. The aforementioned American invasion was the result of Sex and the City’s third series, in which Carrie and Miranda discussed the former’s most recent crush over pink-iced vanilla cupcakes from the Magnolia bakery. Felicity Cloake’s perfect fairy cakes capture their understated charm: a light vanilla sponge with a basic icing-sugar-and-water glaze and a smattering of hundreds and thousands. Before their bigger, snazzier US counterparts invaded British shores, fairy cakes decorated children’s party tables across the land alongside iced gems and crisps.


In the UK, cupcakes are fairy cakes rebranded. Photograph: Felicity Cloake/The Guardian The nostalgia cupcake
