If you like cupcakes and cute things then step right this way as I have found the perfect thing for you: tiny, bitesized cupcakes from Marley’s Cupcakes.
Oooh! So cute! Not enough emojis in the world for these little fellas! 😍😋🍰
It feels like everyone has gone apeshit for cupcakes in the last few years. I never really understood the obsession with them myself. I find them all a bit style over substance: cupcakes always look amazing and you think they’re going to taste awesome but they usually consist of a dryish sponge cake absolutely piled high with toppings so elaborate that I inevitably end up with buttercream smeared all up my nose.
The frosting is always the best bit but there’s a horrible imbalance in topping-to-cake ratio so you always end up with a piece of boring cake minus any topping that you end up just chucking in the bin. Very disappointing.
Enter, Marley’s Cupcakes who have avoided this whole debacle by baking teeny, tiny cupcakes that you can eat in one bite and therefore enjoy your cake with frosting every time. Finally! Another plus is that they’re as big as a £2 coin and fit in the palm of your hand – they’re just so gosh-darn cute!
Marley’s cupcakes are an American brand started by a guy called Marley (so the guy on the counter told me) and at the moment they just have one small outlet in The Shard Arcade (Sharcade? Hmm, they missed a trick there) at London Bridge Station.
He also told me that at the moment ‘somebody’s mum’ bakes the mini cupcakes and decorates them by hand every morning. I wasn’t sure if he was just spinning me a line here but I doublechecked with someone else and they confirmed his story so I guess it must be true. Either way, full credit to that person’s mum as they’re hand-making around 700 cupcakes every day!
You can pick up a box of six cupcakes for a pretty reasonable £5. You can also get boxes of 12, 25, 100, or just a bag of three for £2.50.
Our six favourite cupcakes
The six cupcakes below are all very tasty and here are a few, scant words on each. It was as much as I could muster from just one bite:
- – Chocolate Salted Caramel: A very rich chocolate fudge icing with a slight twang of caramel.
- – Chocolate Peanut Butter: A peanut buttery good time. My favourite one.
- – Red Velvet: Good if you like red velvet cakes. Is it just the ‘red’ that makes it taste nice?
- – Coconut Lime: Very limey with a lime curd filling. Good desiccated coconut sprinkles to add some crunch.
- – Banoffee: Really banana-ry with a taste of those foam banana sweets from your childhood.
- – Lemon Raspberry Cheesecake: Buttery, sweet and lemony. The guy behind the counter’s favourite.
They all remained very moist, even though I bought them during a late summer heatwave and then took them on the Central Line. I know they’re only tiny but when you think that you normally get charged £3.50 for a crappy brownie in most coffee shops I think they are actually quite good value for money, and certainly more tasty.
Plus they have the added bonus of me being able to eat a cupcake without getting frosting smeared into my nostrils. And that’s a winner in anyone’s book, right?
