During August, Northern Soul Cupcakes ran a competition on Facebook to design your fantasy cupcake, with the promise that the winner (who designed the cupcake with the most ‘likes’) would win a batch of 12 of their own cakes.  Risky promise without knowing what people were going to come up with!  There were some really great sounding ideas, such as black forest style with cream and morello cherries, rocky road and lemon meringue with white chocolate.  However, I’m proud to say that I was the winner with this design:

“The Honey Trap: a Sheffield cupcake! Honey flavoured sponge using honey from the Sheffield Honey Company, with crushed honeycomb mixed and baked into the sponge, and a little puddle of honey at the top. Topped with vanilla flavoured buttercream icing, and sprinkled with crushed honeycomb.”

Being a big fan of the Sheffield Honey Company, I wanted to give my entry a little local edge and it also had the bonus of getting the lovely Jez from TSHC to give my cupcake a few plugs, getting it some extra votes – thanks Jez!

Northern Soul Cupcakes is run by Jayne Harrison, who has been gradually expanding her cupcake business, despite having another job – she had great success baking for friends and family and describes herself as a one-woman band, who likes to offer a custom made service.  Jayne’s blog has loads of photos of her cupcakes; an ice cream cone cupcake being a really popular one that has attracted a lot of attention:

Northern Soul Cupcakes' ice cream cone cupcake

ANYWAY, back to my cake!  Because of holidays, weekends away and two people trying to co-ordinate their diaries, it took Jayne and I quite a while to arrange delivery of the cupcakes, but we finally managed it last week – so I invited over a few friends who had helped by voting, to share the spoils!  Jayne dropped off the cakes after work and I restrained myself until everyone arrived before the great unveiling.  Here’s how they looked!

Honey Trap cupcakes

Jayne and I thought that the Sheffield Honey Company’s limited edition Vanilla honey would go well in the recipe, which it definitely did:

Honey cupcakes with Sheffield Honey Company vanilla honey

We all loved the cinder toffee that Jayne made with the honey, and had crumbled on top – there wasn’t a scrap of it left in the box!   The cakes tasted fresh and had a lovely light hint of honey, without it being really overpowering and there was just the right amount of moist buttercream topping with a final drizzle of honey on top.  More than anything, I was a bit relieved that the recipe actually worked out, so top marks to Jayne for putting it all together and I hope she enjoyed making them as much as we enjoyed eating them.

Finally, a little apology to Jez – I had promised him some cake as he’d helped me out by promoting it, but when the cakes arrived we couldn’t arrange to meet up in time before the cakes would have been passed their best – so Jez, this one’s for you :

Honey cupcake