It seems that me & Katie of Leedsgrub shared some telephatic cupcake thoughts. I had been plotting all week to pop over to Chapel Allerton on Sunday on my way to lunch for some cupcakery…Katie beat me by ONE day and made it over to the wonderfully vintage little bakery on Saturday! It’s not the first time – I think I missed her at Hansas’ one Sunday by 30 mins!!

As you probably figured by now, I love most stuff vintage-y, cute-sy, yumm-y and retro-y. Even baker-y. Yeah, all good things end with a Y. I’ve done a few cupcake rounds, and have grand plans of spending a day trawling cupcakeries in NYC later this year. So far, I’ve loved the Hummingbird as their cakes are not sweet, which is then nicely tampered by the super sugary icing. Bacon don’t like it as much – he thinks it slightly weird that the cakes demonstrate a total lack of sugar whilst the icing is sickly sweet. I don’t mind it as I can then scrape off most of the icing so I end up with a suitably sweet cupcake. And of course, the fact that their recipes always turn out well and tastes like what they serve in-store. BUT the Hummingbird Bakery is not the topic of my post today – the Leeds-born Sunshine Bakery is.

Most definately a welcome addition to Leeds, I had yet to find something quite like this in the Leeds area…or anywhere near. We popped in on our way to Mother’s Day lunch – very lucky as they are not usually open on Sundays- to pick up some cupcakes. I actually checked their twitter feed before I left to see if they’re open, and as luck would have it, off the back of Katie’s lovely review of their cakes, they were offering a free cupcake to anyone who said they love leedsgrub! How nice is that ??

It was very lovely inside the shop, a certain modern vintage feel to it, from the proper coffee machines to china cups. We chatted about twitter abit (i follow them) , and how more businessess should embrace it ect..I do love speaking to businessess on twitter, it’s very bizzare but lovely! It’s even more wonderful when you see the person behind the twitter account….and especially for a ‘small but perfectly formed’ local bakery like this which I would have otherwise not found out about if not for the fact it had been tweeted around by local tweeps.

More on the ‘small but perfectly formed’ part – they are looking into expanding back and front, with tables planned on the sidewalk and opening up of a secret garden up back now that spring is FINALLY upon us. Wow. I must return when that happens – I do love a good cuppa with cake in the garden! At the moment there are tables inside for you to have your cake, and if the mother in law hadn’t been waiting for us at the pub we would had probably sat down for a cuppa and continue chatting with the friendly cupcake maker behind the counter (which I had very rudely not got his name!!). So we had ours to go for after lunch, packed in a sturdy specially-made-for-cupcakes 4 hole box.

We went away with two double chocolate, one mango & passionfruit and one Eton Mess cupcake. The one with the white rose is Eton Mess

The Mango & Passionfruit is the one with choc bits on white frosting

And of course, the double chocolate

The Mango & Passionfruit was very summery – light, with the right amount of fruitininess. Bacon loved this – and for someone who dislike passionfruit & mango, this is high praise indeed. The MIL gave it her thumbs up as well – her favourite. The Eton Mess was also very, very lovely – a meringue-like frosting with the delicate white rose to top it off….and I love the delicate strawberry flavours that was in this pretty and delicious cupcake. yum yum good.

However, the best of them lot, in my opinion, was the double chocolate. The sponge was light and moist, without losing it’s chocolate gooeyness. The frosting was absolutely DIVINE – I believe it’s very whipped chocolate cream with a glaze of chocolate on top. Chocolate cupcakes tend to get slightly sickly for me with the frosting, however, I could have had 10 more of these. Mm mm good.

See how moist the sponge is? Ohmigod…

The verdict? Bacon gave it his double thumbs up, even going as far to say that this is the best cupcake he had had so far. He’s plotting to send me to one of the cupcake classes that they regularly run . As for me, I absolutely love how everything is so light and delicate, with the right amout of sugar and moistness.

The Sunshine Bakery
182 Harrogate Road
Chapel Allerton
Leeds LS7 4NZ

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