At Pearl Lowe and Danny Goffey’s dramatic gothic-themed wedding in December, complete with candles, blood-red roses and bride and bridesmaids in black, the wedding cake struck a discordant note. Far from being a cobweb-draped, Miss Havisham-style affair, the happy couple posed in front of a pile of cute cupcakes. All right, they were iced in dark chocolate with lace details, but still, this added an odd element of girlie charm. One can hardly imagine the rail-thin Lowe stuffing herself with buttercream, still less skinny guests Kate Moss, Lisa Moorish and Rhys Ifans. But cupcakes have become so fashionable that not to have them would have looked like a faux pas.

Speaking as someone who had gorgeously glittery cupcakes at her own wedding, seven years ago, I like to imagine I launched this trend. A more obvious kick-starter (cited by several cupcake-makers I spoke to) was the scene in Sex and the City when Carrie and Miranda dissected their love lives outside New York’s Magnolia Bakery, while stuffing their faces with its gooey wares. It may have been even more implausible than many other story lines (as if they would ever eat carbs), but suddenly cupcakes were cool. They gave out the same positive messages as Carrie’s accessories (cool, quirky, fun), but at a zillionth of the cost — and unlike the accessories, cupcakes have stayed fashionable ever since.

Lily Jones, a graphic designer turned cupcake-maker, recently baked a 10-page jewellery shoot for Lula magazine, accessorising the costly rocks with her pomegranate-topped cakes. She has just been commissioned to bake her wares for a party to be held by the fashion photographer Carlos Lumiere. “I find cupcakes fulfil me creatively,” she says. “You can be so artistic.” Baking as Lily Vanilli, she targets her wares at the fashion crowd, selling at Swanfield Market, just off Brick Lane, and at the Vintage Heaven shop on Columbia Road, both in east London.

Naturally, fashion-savvy celebs have been quick to catch on. For Posh Spice’s birthday last year, the supermodel Heidi Klum bought her a supply of cupcakes. (I wonder who is actually eating them?) Then, both Madonna and Nelson Mandela ordered cupcakes from the London bakery Candy Cakes for their respective birthday parties (50 and 90). Meanwhile, Mac Cosmetics has got in on the act with its new Sugarsweet range, with colours including Lemon Chiffon and Red Velvet (an iconic American cupcake topped with cream-cheese icing). And Google has revealed that “cupcakes” is the fastest-rising recipe search in the UK.

“A cupcake is an affordable treat that you don’t have to share,” says Martha Swift, of London’s smartest cupcake emporium, Primrose Bakery (favoured by Moss, David Tennant and David Walliams). “Cupcakes are irresistible to all ages,” agrees the Michelin-starred chef (and fan) Tom Aikens. “Kids love them because they are bite-sized, and adults love them for the nostalgia fix of childhood. They are a nice way of having something naughty and sugary — comforting, in fact — and because they are small, you don’t need to feel guilty about enjoying them.”

And in these scary economic times, who can blame us for wanting to indulge in a candy-coloured treat? “Even in a credit crisis, people still have birthdays and weddings,” Swift says.

So, as Woolies lies emptied of its very shelving, the bakery business continues to boom. Primrose Bakery has just opened a sister store in Covent Garden. This, in turn, is rubbing shoulders with Candy Cakes, which is also expanding to more sites; meanwhile The Hummingbird Bakery (patronised by Elle Macpherson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Minnie Driver) is hoping to open its third store this year. “We were worried that it might be quiet because of the credit crunch, but it’s been quite the opposite,” says Tarek Malouf, the owner of Hummingbird. “We’ve had our busiest quarter since we opened.” For those who can’t face the queues, The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook is out in March.

So what, exactly, is a cupcake? A long debate in the pages of Waitrose Food Illustrated came to the conclusion that the key difference between a cupcake and a fairy cake is down to the top — cupcakes, apparently, being flat and fairy cakes domed. Bakers, on the other hand, say the difference between the two is really about size and topping: a classic cupcake, slathered in buttercream, is about twice the size of a fairy cake, with its modest coating of fondant.

Matt McAuliffe, product developer for M&S, recently spent a week studying at the Institute of Culinary Education, in New York, in an attempt to construct the perfect cupcake for a spring launch nationwide. “In America, the ratio of sponge to buttercream is about two-thirds to one-third. That’s really sickly — it has been hard to make it palatable for British tastes,” he says. “But at the same time, we wanted to have the spectacular icing.” His solution was to use fresh fruit to flavour the buttercream, and to fill the centre with fruit compote to add a touch of acidity. (Personally, I think they’re more delicious than Magnolia’s tooth-jarringly sweet creations.) “There are lots of cupcake places in London, but we want to spread the trend nationwide,” he says.

Truly a case of “let them eat cake”.

magnoliacupcakes.com; lilyvanilli.com; candycakes.eu; primrosebakery.org.uk; hummingbirdbakery.com

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