Iron Cupcake: Showstoppers

My favourite Sunday evening activity rolled around again last weekend- cake o'clock at Iron Cupcake Leeds. For those of you that regularly visit this little space on the internet, you'll have heard me waffling on about this on quite a regular basis; I've been a regular at the monthly competition for a good few years now and pride myself on my excellent eating cake judging abilities. Plus I have experienced life as a baker (once out of the last 44 competitions...). This month's theme was a special one as it was advertised as the last competition that Zoe would be running, so to mark the end of an era, the bakers had to create Showstoppers. 

There were some real beauties as usual, the bakers had gone all out to make some showstopping designs and flavours for us lucky eaters to test. I had two real favourites this time- Curtain Closer Chocolate Orange Cupcakes (apparently I'm not the only one who's a sucker for chocolate orange as these were the winners!), and Its Always The Quiet Ones Rhubarb and Custards (they were just so beautiful and really delicious too!). 

Here's a few of the other entries too- it always amazes me how much effort goes into each and every cake!

Although last week was Zoe's last ever Iron Cupcake, there was an exciting announcement that the competition was not over for good... cue sighs of relief from keen bakers and hungry bellies across Leeds. My best friend Charlie has taken over the event now which is flipping fantastic news- she's going to make a great little hostess (I'm not biased at all, honest!). So if you live around Leeds you can rest safe in the knowledge that once a month, the upstairs room in The Adelphi will still be filled to the brim with cake, cake and more cake.