When Marie Antoinette supposedly said: “let them eat cake!” over 200 years ago, she probably didn’t imagine that the masses would be doing just that.

Yet over the last few years, cupcakes have become as much of a fashion accessory as this season’s ‘it’ bag or a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, and, what’s more, they’re a lot less pricey.

Ever since they featured on the television programme Sex And The City, cupcakes have been featured in high fashion photoshoots and mini versions have been dished out as canapés at swanky soirées. Vogue even named owning a cupcakery as the entrepreneurial fantasy of our times.

Latest figures from the retail analysts at Kantar provided proof that this flight of fancy is also bearing fruit commercially – in the 12 months to April this year, sales of cupcakes nationally increased by 16 per cent year-on-year, with the overall volume of the sweet and sometimes sickly offerings sold up by a staggering seven per cent.

Given that figures from the TNS Worldpanel research company showed  that UK sales alone of cupcakes were worth £7.3m last year, the colourful creations are worth a lot of lolly.

Seemingly from nowhere, a commercial phenomenon has been cooked up in the kitchens of home bakers and cafes across the country. Manchester’s fashionable Spinningfield business district even boasts a Hey Little Cupcakes pop-up shop.

If Vogue is right in its appraisal of the confectionary market, then two  women from Chorlton are living the dream.

The Sweet Tooth Cupcakery is based on a quiet Chorlton street – with a pop-up branch in Manchester’s Northern Quarter – and has a vast array of sugary goodness available for cupcake lovers young and old alike.

Baker Vicky Parker and owner Lorna Royle, previously a stay-at-home mum, started up in 2008 and succeeded in turning what was initially a hobby into a viable business.

“It’s something that translates really well,” Vicky says. “People who do bake at home are very passionate about it. If you give someone a cake that you’ve made, then it’s a really
nice way to express your friendship. It’s a good way of getting women into business.”

Vicky has even been named one of the seven winners, of British Baker Magazine’s cupcake championship, held annually in honour of national cupcake week.

The Sweet Tooth Cupcakery is the only craft bakery in the north west to be awarded the accolade, where each day of the week is designated a special cupcake.

The bakery create cupcakes named after public figures. One of Vicky’s, the Ernest Hemingway, was a winner in the competition and will be launched on today.

But why the Hemingway?

“It’s designed to be like a Keylime pie,” Vicky explains. “I wanted to make something a bit desserty, so I named it after Hemingway because Keylime pie is from Florida and he spent a lot of time in Florida writing his books. He was also fond of mojitos, which are rum and lime, so that inspired me.”

“There’s so much that you can do creatively with cupcakes,” Lorna adds..

“There’s absolutely no end to the colours and the flavours and what you can adorn them with. It’s just a single portion thing, so it’s the variety. And cupcakes themselves have that cute, old-fashioned quality to them.”

Vicky says, “I think people are trying to get back to an old sense of what their values are. I think that cupcakes are cheap enough that you can come in and get one and it’s a treat, something that’s just for you, and it’s individually decorated just for you.”

Alison Seagrave was the award winning head chef at Harvey Nichols, Manchester, when she when she decided to leave to open her own business Macaroon, in Bamford, last April, a coffee shop with cupcakes and macaroons high on the menu – some 30 percent of the products on sale.

Her explanation of the success of the cupcake market isn’t scientific, but it makes sense. “I think it’s because people eat with their eyes,” she says.

» Sweet Tooth are launching their deluxe cupcakes this week, with introductory prices until Sunday and free pots of tea. For more information, go to twitter.com/lorna_sweet.

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Why do we love them?

We asked Haleh Moravej, a senior lecturer in nutrition at Manchester Metropolitan University and director of a nutrition clinic in Sheffield, why women love cupcakes.

She says: “The most important thing about cupcakes is this individualisation, the fact that every single one can have a different identity, so it’s about different people – if you like pink then you go for pink cup cakes, or you can put pictures on or stars or whatever.”

“When it comes to eating cupcakes, cake or any type of confectionery, we talk about the emotional side of things, we have that emotional connection to food. The birthdays, the celebrations, the girls get together and ‘have a massive tub of ice cream to talk about our problems’ – it’s kind of breaking down those barriers and, obviously, that kind of sugar boost might make you feel better for a temporary period, and obviously afterwards the guilt will kick in, then you have to go to the gym.”

“But it’s a combination of sociology; obviously emotions, which is the psychology, connecting with other women, making it into an individual item that belongs to you.

“And I think with the Facebook generation you’re always marketing something, you’re marketing yourself with the best picture, you’re marketing your holiday, and I think you’re marketing yourself with your cupcake.

“I think cupcakes mean a lot of different things to different people.”

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