A little bit of what you Fancie
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
It’s always nice to go out for a spot of lunch, especially when it’s at one of my favourite eateries, Out of the Woods, and even more so when I get to go and talk to people about food.
Lynn of Leed’s underground tea party fame invited me to come and meet Amanda, creator of Fancie cupcakes and promised me I’d get a sample. Well who am I to turn down a free cupcake?!
Amanda is a trained pastry chef and ventured into cupcakes, starting out in her kitchen. Soon customers were clamouring to view her cakes and asking where the shop was, so she opened her own shop. She now has three with cupcakes also available in Out of the Woods.
What impresses me is the amount of passion Amanda has for her cupcakes. Despite having quite a large commercial operation, she ensures good quality ingredients, freshly baked cakes and delicious flavours. Whilst cupcake shops have become extremely popular, the quality of the end product can be somewhat lacklustre, but this is absolutely not the case with Fancie.
Amanda gave both Lynn and I four cupcakes each, which I had to resist eating until I had photographed them. Up until this point I wondered whether I would really know the difference between these cupcakes and any other. But then I tried one. The cake was moist and light; a result of them having been baked fresh that day. And the buttercream was made with real butter, no margarine which is often used because it colours better. The icing was really well piped and I was given a couple of pointers as to where I could purchase bigger nozzles and how to get them looking as lovely. I’m pretty sure however hard I try I would be able to make the buttercream quite as good as these one.
In my box I got:
- Dark chocolate and raspberry with vanilla buttercream
- Chocolate with a caramel middle (pink heart sprinkles)
- Lemon with lemon filling
- Victoria (green with multicoloured sprinkles)
I think my favourite was possibly the chocolate and raspberry – it had little white chocolate bits in which tasted amazing and it was really popular with my colleagues too (well I had to the let THEM have some, their little eyes lit up when they saw the box). A close second was the victoria which had a nice little oozy jammy surprise when you bit in to it.
So where are these cupcakes I hear you ask. Well for once, they are only available readily in the North, around Sheffield (see Fancie’s Facebook page for details), but us lucky Leeds people can also hop down to Out of the Woods to get our cakey fill too.
Check out Fancie’s website here
Thanks Amanda for the cupcakes and thank you Lynn for inviting me to meet Amanda.
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