So it’s that time again when we all dig out of favorite and most glam outfits possible for Essex Fashion Week 2012! We’d been part of the twitter buzz surrounding #EFW for months prior to the event and were so excited! We’d heard that Adam & Simon Ryan along with Danielle (twitter.com/we_bop) & the EFW team had arranged it BIGGER and BETTER than ever and our companies Love Cupcake & Cheri Bakewells were cooking up something fab too!

After a week of prep making hundreds of goodies in a range of pastel colours (hot for the 2012 Summer trend!) we chose our outfits, adding in greens and pinks of course, some of our fav colours of the moment! and with our Hot Pink Trays loaded with goodies we set off to the Ceme Centre in Rainham!

We arrived with our team to see the fabulous bright pink branded boohoo.com fiat 500 outside and after walking the red carpet, getting papped by the fab Daniel Halawi on the way in (facebook.com/danielhalawisphotos) we entered into the buzz of EFW! Gorgeous bar men and girls greeted us with a glass of bubbly and we set off for a nosey into the shopping area to see what was on offer, and we were not disappointed!

Our favorite stall had to be the Milkshake Essex Stand ( www.milkshakeessex.co.uk and twitter.com/milk_shakeessex ) where we picked up some fab Volume Solution Styling Spray to go with our Sleep Rollers and drying hood – cooooool – Big bouncy hair – my favorite!! The team on their stall were so friendly and lovely, and they had two gorgeous promo girls with their Sleeprollers in looking HOT too! Milkshake certainly got it right! x

Also in the shopping area was the lovely Sophie Mais Delights (sophiemaisdelights.co.uk), Crystal Boutique (thecrystalboutique.co.uk) and Love Lemonade (lovelemonade.com) providing their sparkly goodies, we spotted Billi Mucklow wearing a Love Lemonade Bracelet, and 2 Shoes with a Sophie Mais phone case during the day!

We also got to see a few faces from the Wedding Industry who were there to see the show – we spotted Joyce from Brides and Beauty (bridesandbeauty.co.uk/) and Amanda from Ardley Weddings (ardleyweddings.co.uk) watching the show!

During the show, We were handing out our fabulous bespoke Speech Bubble Cookies in a range of pastel colours, all finished with some of our favorite sayings from Essex and beyond…. “gossipinell” and “cocksure” featured due to our fav Towie Girls Cara & Billi, not to mention some “What a SORT!” Kirk Norcross inspired cookies, after handing him one during the show, he gave it back and said i was the sort before swapping it for some our fab Lips Cookies instead and letting me have the “What a sort” one – what a sweetheart, left me a bit starstruck to be honest after that little squeeze, he’s a bit gorgeous You can hear all about what Kirk thought about EFW here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19t8VAy9J0s

Also spotted with one of our cookies was the lovely Jeff Brazier, what a cutie he was! Our gorgeous Cheri Bakewells went in for a cheeky grab for him – he tweeted the next day to say he’d enjoyed his cookie with a cup of tea! I think he left our Cheri B with a bit of a crush!

After handing out some treats we sat down to watch some of the fabulous and very gorgeous runway models showcase Essex’s Finest Fashion! Boohoo.com smashed it with their hot pastel collection, prettylittlething.com ruled the runway with the gorgeous summer accessories and Carlie Francis of Kandi (ilovekandi.co.uk) headed a fantastic energetic performance, you can watch it here if you missed out http://www.youtube.com/ilovekanditv!! Loved it! Amy Childs took to the catwalk to show off her brand new collection, modelling it herself, she looked the part in everyway!

All in all it was a fantastic day, had the best time ever! Well done to the EFW team! xx To see all of our photos head to our Facebook pages www.facebook.com/LoveCupcakeEssex and www.facebook.com/cheribakewells.biscuits.essex (twitter.com/lovecupcake_x / twitter.com/cheribakewells )

Back in early November we had a huge shock to find that Love Cupcake were in the running for Best Cake Designer in the Wedding Ideas Awards 2012. It was in the hands of our lovely customers, brides, and Wedding Ideas readers (The hugely popular and amazing wedding magazine – if you are getting married you absolutely HAVE to grab a copy)  to decide which five Cake Designers should make the final cut, and be one of the five lucky bakers to make it to the final awards ceremony in January 2012. It was such a shock to even see our name in the list, with some amazing bakers such as Choccywoccydoodah and Maisie Fantaisie that i almost fell off my chair!

It was left in the hands of the readers of Wedding Ideas magazine until 30th November (Cake Judgement Day hehe) and we had some absolutely heartwarming messages from some of our previous and future brides as well as our previous Masterclass students wishing us good luck (it’s things like this that make me love our job)

On the 30th November, whilst elbow deep in cake decorating a beautiful two tier cake adorned with pearls and a bow, we received a call from the team at Wedding Ideas Magazine to advise us that the readers and online voters had voted us into their final five!!!!! After a good few minutes of screaming at Cheri Bakewells in the kitchen and squealing down the phone at them, i thanked the team and hung up the phone….cue more squealing and screaming! haha! I don’t think we’d ever been more excited in our lives, this was a BIG deal to Love Cupcake – the awards ceremony would fall just around the time of our 2nd birthday and it was just amazing to think what we’d managed to achieve in such a short space of time. It was totally and utterly heartwarming, that our cakes, cupcakes and cookies had brought us to a level which we never even imagined possible. Amaze!

We want to thank each and every Wedding Ideas Reader, online voter, Love Cupcake Brides, Brides to Be and Love Cupcake Masterclass students for making your vote count, you really have made our year and just getting into the finals has been the absolute “Icing on the cake” x Also a HUGE HUGE Congratulations to all of the other Best Cake Designer finalists, as well as all the other category finalists for getting this far too – see you in January!

All that’s left is the awards ceremony in January and if last year is anything to go buy we are in store for an amazing time!

Thank you everyone!xxx Lots of love, Mrs LC & Miss CB xxx

For those that follow Love Cupcake on Twitter you’ll have seen the buzz and excitement when we got asked to showcase our cookie brand “Cheri Bakewells” in the VIP section at Essex Fashion Week 2011! Not only are we huge fashion fans, but it gave us a chance to show everyone what we do at Cheri Bakewells!

Following a brainstorm, with cake of course We got to work in baking our Vanilla Pod biscuits, Dresses, Underwear, Swimwear, Shorts, Men’s Undies & some squares for our “Keep Calm and Be Reem” biscuits, followed by an icing marathon to ice and pack the hundreds of biscuits ready to head to EFW!

Arriving at Woolston Manor in Chigwell, we entered into marquee to see the huge white runway stage, and sparkling star floor! Gorgeous models floating around and mayhem through the venue of everyone in a buzz to get things ready for opening! Entering into the VIP section we were greeted by the huge glowing display by Essex Couture who were showcasing their new perfume “Essex Girl” and providing the VIP’s with Champagne! Uber Glam!

We set up our biscuit treats alongside Lucie from Wonderland Bakery, Lily from Sunshine Cake Heaven and Vic from Black Vanilla Cupcakes – who did an annoyingly delicious mini red velvet! haha! There was even a yummy sweet buffet haunting me all day from Hayley Jane Events!

Throughout the day we were treated to an amazing fashion show with some of my favorite brands like Kandi www.kandikidz.co.uk, Essexy Legs www.essexylegs.co.uk, Jennifer Hibbert www.jenniferhibbert.com, Arthur & Betty www.arthurandbetty.com as well as Nicola Goodger launching her cute new brand of tees! You can take a look here http://nicolagoodger.co.uk/shop/ – and using a quote from one of her quirky tees…. My heart belongs to Essex!

Cheri Bakewells bespoke iced biscuits went down an absolute storm and due to the high demand for them, we had to hold a box back for later in the evening! It was cookie crazy! Towie’s Frankie Essex said she loved them so much she ate two, and took a third home for her brother Joey Essex who later tweeted about them (see here http://twitter.com/#!/JoeyEssex_/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2FvDtstUvC)! Nicola Goodger thought they were super cute, and Chloe was in awe over the cute underwear cookie we gave her to take home! xx We also bumped into the very glam “2 Shoes” from this years X Factor, who stopped to chat about our fab cookies and pose for a snap! We even bumped into Umar Kamani from the amazing www.boohoo.com who thought our cookies were great! He was such fun and a genuinly nice guy too! x

Our highlight of the day had to be Loose Lady Carol Mcgiffin who was cracking up when we gave her one of our “Keep Calm and Be Reem” cookies! She loved it so much she said she wanted to write about it in her column – how amazing! She happily posed for a hilarious picture and continued to party the night away!

All that was left was to party the night away – and what a night it was! Well done to Adam, Danielle and the rest of the EFW team on a fantastic day! xxx

For a full look at all of the photos from Essex Fashion Week visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LoveCupcakeEssex or www.facebook.com/cheribakewells.biscuits.essex

Mrs LC & Miss CB xxx

So we were super excited to be asked to cater for a very exciting James Bond themed birthday – with a tower of our delicious cupcakes in this theme! After lots of research and pestering Mr LC about his favorite Bond films, we decided it had to include pictures of Bonds old and new, Casino chips, Dice, Cards, Aston Martins (we opted for the classic model), cocktails and of course the rather iconic gold bodies – ooh er! x

We set about making our decorations before sending them off to the venue for the special 60th Birthday event!

We hear the party was a huge success and we heard from them to say “Cakes were delish as always Love Cupcake, thanks!!”. Many Happy Returns to the Birthday Boy! xx

When we were asked to create something trendy for Mitch’s 14th birthday party, with a headphones theme, we couldn’t resist trying out making mini “Beats By Dre” Headphones!! We were so excited, as there is nothing we love more than a new challenge and got to work on handmaking each little piece for the headphones! The end result was incredible and went down an absolute storm at the birthday party with all the teens!

We received this lovely feedback “”Gemma I just had to let you know that my sons reaction when he saw the cakes was priceless! Him and his friends were stunned….thought they were so cool and were all taking pictures to show their mums! Anyway i wanted to say a big thank you, Monsterbeats are all hip with the teens so it was the most perfect cupcake!”- and here’s a few snaps of the end result.

Food Hygiene is such an important topic and one which i thought i would highlight as it’s a very useful topic, and has not only helped me within business, but also when choosing restaurants and venues.

Love Cupcake are proud to be inspected by our local authority, our most recent inspection being in November on our new premises in Rayleigh, where we were awarded an excellent score of 5! Food hygiene is very important to us here so we were very proud that our score reflected this, so of course we’re very pleased that this information is now available for everyone to see. We also hold a food hygiene certificate (Level 2 for Caterers) from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

The Scheme
The nationally recognised scheme is run by the Food Standards Agency although there are many similar smaller schemes if your local authority is not part of it yet (if you are unsure you may check with your local council to see how you can view food hygiene scores/records) The food hygiene rating scheme for our local authority and other Essex areas launched on 14th February 2011. If you haven’t heard of it before then i shall explain further.

The scheme is run by local authorities and the Food Standards Agency and helps us choose where to eat out or shop for food by giving information about the hygiene standards in restaurants, pubs, cafés, takeaways, hotels and other places you eat, as well as supermarkets,other food shops and home food businesses, such as Love Cupcake!

We were very privileged to be providing cupcakes for a special little girls birthday party recently, and with a fantastic “Pirates & Princesses” theme, it left us lots of room to create something special! We hear the cupcakes were a real talking point at the party and all that was left to decided was whether to have a Pirate or a Princess cake! Happy 3rd Birthday Frankie, we hope you had fun!x

What an amazing week we had last week, two gorgeous brides tying the knot in Essex using Love Cupcake Cupcake Towers as their cake display, and boy did they look fabulous (both the brides and the cakes)

First congratulations goes to Kate & Paul, the new Mr & Mrs Pirie who went for a stunning Chocolate and Vanilla display with sparkling hearts and a special “Mr & Mrs” cupcake too!

The second congratulations goes to Donna & Darren, who chose a beautiful pink tower with blossom flowers, fit for a princess!

To contact us for a quote for your wedding please email us at info@love-cupcake.co.uk , Wedding Cupcakes start from £2.00 each, and include delivery and set up to your venue. We deliver our wedding cupcakes free in Essex (for area’s further afield please contact us)

Our cake stand hire is £40 (with a refundable £70 deposit) and can include optional light for no extra charge and includes set up and collection so there’s nothing for you to do except enjoy your big day!

Congratulations to all the newlyweds!x

<3 LC xx