Forget cupcakes – the most fashionable new sweet treat involves a mouthwatering cake on a stick. The Lollicake, as two Didsbury businesswomen call them, is fast becoming the guilty pleasure of choice for fashionistas in the city.
Just as the cupcake became a huge trend in recent years, thanks in part to it being the treat of choice for the fashionistas in hit TV show Sex And The City, the Cakepop – or lollicake – is also a US trend that is now trickling onto our shores.
And lifelong pals Katy Pardon and Laura Drabble are putting their stamp on it by creating their own firm, called Lollicakes, that has already become a roaring success.
When Lily Allen came to Manchester last week, to launch her new fashion range Lucy In Disguise with her sister Sarah Owen, what should she specifically request to be served alongside champagne to their VIP guests? Lollicakes, of course.
And Didsbury-based Katy and Laura are getting used to high profile commissions now, despite only going full-time with the business in February.
They’ve already been signed up by Selfridges in the Trafford Centre to stock their glitzy and glamorous cake offerings, and will soon be available in Harvey Nichols in Manchester, too.
The reason the girls believe they are so appealing to fashionistas is simple.
Laura laughs: “We call them the edible fashion accessory.
“For a start, every girl will love to hear that there are only 170 calories per cake, compared to 300 calories or more for your average cupcake.
“For us, the most fantastic part of the job is the design element.”
Calories aside, it’s not hard to see the appeal of the dinky round cakes, that the girls can create into a myriad of different colours, shapes and styles.
Commissions have included everything from miniature handbags to meerkats and even Lollicake versions of celebrities. They created Newcastle United shirt cakes in honour of TV presenters Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly for their ITV show Push The Button, and created five cake versions of chart-topping pop heart-throbs The Wanted that a radio station presented them with. They also fashioned the cakes into mini versions of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to celebrate their royal wedding.
Laura and Katy, both 30, met while studying at university in Manchester and have remained friends, and flatmates, ever since.
The girls had always loved to bake, and they started off serving up their lollicakes just to family and friends.
But when Laura, who used to work as a fashion buyer, took some onto a fashion shoot, she realised the business potential of their hobby.
She said: “Everyone on the shoot went crazy for the Lollicakes. By last Christmas we suddenly started to realise we were making so many cakes for people that it could be viable as a business.
“The world of cupcakes is now such a saturated market that we knew we had something that really makes us stand out.”
In February, both girls ditched their day jobs to start full-time production of their cakes and haven’t looked back since. They range in price from £2 to £3 depending on how complex the design.
Laura beams: “We now stock in Selfridges and are about to go into Harvey Nichols, and we’ve also been asked to create an exclusive range for The Circle Club, which is to open up a champagne bar in the Trafford Centre. The market we seem to be appealing to is quite high-end, I suppose because the product has quite a glamorous image too, but we love that. “
Katy, who used to work as a PA, is the main baker, while Laura works more on the business and marketing side.
And Lollicakes have been such a hit, the girls are now thinking of taking on employees to expand the business.
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Design lesson tickles the tastebuds
While the Lollicake recipe itself is a closely-guarded secret, I joined the girls to have a go at decorating one of the miniature chocolate cakes for myself.
First of all we melted some white chocolate, which is used to create the outer “casing” of the cake.
Using a regular lollipop stick, I had to dip that into the hot chocolate, which is then used to spear into the cake, sticking it into place.
Then the fun part – submerging the cakey blob into the molten chocolate, swirling it round to cover it in the sweet stuff. How these girls stay so slim is beyond me – I’d have happily eaten the chocolate-covered cake there and then without any need for decoration!
However, remaining professional, the girls talked me through some classic design options that I could have a go at. I start off with the easiest of decorations – sprinkling hundreds of thousands onto the hot chocolate which will set into the final cakepop.
Buoyed by the results of that, I have a go at a much trickier concept – painting the chocolate-covered Lollicake after it has been allowed to “set” for half an hour in the fridge.
I decide to go for a sassy leopard print design, and the girls show me how to paint on the design using a mixture of edible cake coverings. The finished look is fabulous – almost too good to eat!
Well, I say almost. As you can probably imagine, once I'd left the Lollicakes kitchen the pretty little cakes’ fate was sealed...
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