Operation Icing Valentine's Cupcake Boxes.

This year my bakery Operation Icing is doing a Valentine's Day cupcake box and I'm pretty excited about it!

These limited edition cupcake boxes are perfect for anyone you want to show some love to this Valentine's Day - your sweetie, your workmates, your family, even yourself! My minimum order is usually 6 cupcakes of one flavour but with the Valentine's box you get to try three flavours and one of them is my famous mini doughnut cupcake!! Hell, even if you hate the schmaltz of v-day this is a rad opportunity to donate money to charity. Yup, that's right, my business is not-for-profit so every penny made from these cupcakes will be donated to our charity of the month the East Sussex Wildlife Rescue and Ambulance Service who provide a front line rescue service for wildlife casualties. ESWRAS, based in Whitesmith, East Sussex deal with calls from both the public and other animal welfare organisations and are staffed entirely by volunteers.

The Valentine's boxes contain:

Two Sweetie cupcakes decorated with heart / love themed sweeties.

Two Double Chocolate Dream cupcakes.

Two Mini Doughnut cupcakes.

The boxes are available for collection in the North Laine area between 5pm and 7pm Thursday Feb 13th and 8am and 10am Friday Feb 14th. You can order via e-mail to jojo(dot)huxster(at)me(dot)com or via the "contact me" button on the Operation Icing website stating your preferred collection time.

Let's catch up!

Hey hey! I've been so busy writing about my travels that I haven't stopped to tell you what I've been doing, well, eating, recently. I'm currently obsessed with Namul's, this new Bibimbap cafe that opened around the corner from me on Gardner Street early this summer. It's now the food I crave and my go-to whenever I'm not feeling up for cooking for myself.

There are three vegan bibimbap options at Namul's, the Classic Bibimbap (minus the egg), the Fluffy Tofu Bowl (also minus the egg) - the tofu itself wasn't vegan when Namul's opened but they've since changed it so that all veggies can partake, and the Mushroom Special which is my favourite.

The Mushroom Special consists of five types of mushroom - regular and king oyster, cloud ear fungus, chanterelle and shiitake, alongside shredded carrots, fresh greens, baby sprouts and fresh seaweed. This all comes on a bed of white, brown or black rice, I always chose black because it's so flavourful. You can also choose your sauce and I always pick Namul's Soy Sauce which is super delicious - I haven't asked about the vegan-ness of the sauces containing chilli (allergic!) and I'm unsure if the Goma Sauce is vegan.

This is such a light healthy delicious meal and I love, love, love all of the types of mushroom. It's one of the priciest dishes on the menu at £6.20 but it's totally worth it because it would cost a fortune to hunt down and buy all of those 'shrooms. I'm all excited just thinking about it and I'm totally counting down the hours until I can have it again.

My other summer obsession is Boho Gelato. I have always loved them right from when they opened with an awesome vegan selection to when they started a vegan friendly ice cream cocktail night. This week they outdid themselves when they unveiled their newest vegan creation, Peanut Butter Sea Salt Caramel. Vegan. Delicious.

This flavour stole my heart and the coveted favourite ice cream ever title. As you can see I had it in a cone with a scoop of Cookies and Cream, a flavour that I suggested and that they put into action. Nice one Boho Gelato!

I'm still on the epic Sunday Roast Quest and last Sunday Sal and I visited The Sussex Yeoman which had come highly recommended. The vegan roast of the day was a Vegan Rosemary and Sunblushed Tomato Polenta with chargrilled Mediterranean vegetables served with seasonal vegetables and roast potatoes. Phew, quite the mouthful!

This large piping hot plate of food arrived with a delicious helping of parsnip chips on top, I'll begin to think Brighton's pubs are in cahoots with a parsnip crisp company at this rate, I swear they're popping up on everything! I wish I could say that I enjoyed this twist on a Sunday roast but as someone who  dislikes bell pepper quite a lot there was an abundance of it left untouched at the end of the meal but the polenta itself was tasty and the plentiful aubergine and courgette were perfectly roasted. The roasties (that's roast potatoes if you're not from around here!) themselves weren't bad but I wasn't a fan of the tomatoey gravy at all. Putting my personal feelings about peppers and tomatoey gravy aside this was a filling and well seasoned Mediterranean meal but it certainly wasn't a satisfying Sunday roast. I'm told this is quite a strange roast option even for The Yeoman but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to check the menu in advance.

So, The Quest continues! The Earth & Stars is still taking first place and there are still roasts to try at The Prince Albert and The Park Crescent as well as rumoured vegan options at both The Wick Inn and The Foundry.

One thing I can't believe I haven't blogged about yet is that Nick and I are currently fostering a kitty whilst his real mum is in New Zealand. His name's Rorschach, or, as I call him, Fluffkins! He's been living with us since the end of May and he's crazy adorable. We already have no idea how we'll cope with giving him back, I'll definitely cry! Just look at that fluffy tummy!

In other super exciting news, I baked for my first ever wedding this week.

This was definitely Operation Icing's biggest order yet and I really hope that they keep coming. I make quite a small amount for the charities by selling to cafes and website orders are where the "big bucks" are. I sell cupcakes through the website for collection in central Brighton in boxes of 6 or 12 which cost £12 or £20 respectively and every single penny of my profits go to animal charities. 

In other news I got sent some Frank bars to try recently, I love to snack so having bars like this on hand is great. They're gluten and nut free as well as being vegan and whilst they're mainly made with fruit they felt more substantial than, say, a nakd bar.

I loved all three of the flavours I tried but the Oat & Chocolate was definitely my favourite, I liked that flavour so much that I'm going to order a box of 20 in their summer sale - £10 for 20 bars, which should keep me going for a while. You can currently buy Frank bars directly from their website or via Planet Organic. 

Lastly I have a little competition for y'all. I'm going to be out of the country when London VegFest is happening but I'm giving away a pair of tickets worth £20 right here.

All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is to leave me a comment letting me know which stall from the list of stallholders you're most excited about visiting at the fest', if you wanted to you could also vote for me in the best blogger category in the VegFest Awards but you totally don't have to!

The competition is open to anyone who'll be in the UK on October 5th & 6th and is able to attend the festival. The competition will close on August 31st and tickets will be sent to you by the lovely people at Veg Fest themselves shortly after the closing date.

Operation Success!

A week ago today I was surrounded by a cloud of icing sugar whilst baking for Brighton Veg Fest. Right now I'm in a hotel in Galway after spending the last six days travelling between Dublin and the west coast of Ireland. There'll be more about that when I get home but for now I wanted to tell you guys about the fest! 

I had my first ever Operation Icing stall there last Saturday and it went even better than I'd dared to imagine it would. I spent 17 hours (with one Pompoko break!) baking on the Friday after almost an entire week spent getting prepared and I still sold out of cupcakes in three and a half hours, crazy! Here's the stall...

Nick suggested I wore my Mad Caddies t-shirt because it went with the stall's colours, genius!

...after looking into the price of a real banner I ended up making my own using paper, my printer, string and two mic stands. The perfect banner for my little punk rock inspired vegan bakery! In case you don't know the name Operation Icing was inspired by one of my favourite bands, Operation Ivy. As you can see my table cloth didn't quite fit the table so I filled in the spaces with leaflets for all of the charities Operation Icing supports.

I made 14 cupcake flavours which included three gluten free options. The best sellers, were definitely the Raspberry Doughnut and Cookies & Cream flavours. I'll make loads more of those next year! 

Unsurprisingly the Speculoos Caramel Cookie flavour also sold super fast...

...as did Peanut Butter Oreo. I actually only came up with this combo on the Thursday evening before Veg Fest after fellow Brighton blogger Christina from paperbagblog tweeted that she was spreading peanut butter on Oreo's. Genius! You've heard that Oreo's are now vegan in the UK right? I'm SO excited about it. Newman O's would be better but these corporate O's will have to do until their friendlier alternative makes it across the pond!

The cupcakes were not only toped with an Oreo cookie but there's a whole Oreo inside too.

I love the new Matcha Green Tea cupcakes, and I'll be adding them to the website soon. As you can see I borrowed the style of icing on them from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I'm assuming that Isa & Terry wont mind as this is all not-for-profit?!

The matcha glaze instead of a buttercream frosting made these stand apart from the other cupcakes and they really appealed to people who said they hated the amount of frosting on most cupcakes. The Sweet & Salty Maple Bacon was the cupcake that really divided opinions, the feedback I got from people was either really positive or "it was interesting" which we all know means weird/gross! I loved the flavour though and I'll definitely continue to offer it for the more adventurous cupcake connoisseur.

As I said last time I blogged, Veg Fest just sneaked into the Raystede donation month and I ended up raising £280. Added together with the other Operation Icing profits for the month the total donation for Feb-March was £351, easily the biggest donation so far!

As well as being excited about selling out of cupcakes and raising money for charity I was also super excited to meet everyone who came by to say hi, to buy cupcakes or to tell me that they enjoyed reading my blog. Thank you! It was super awesome to have support from the blogging community and I'll definitely be seeing you all again next year if not before. 

The only sad thing about working on the Saturday and taking off to Dublin on the Sunday (aside from the fact that I was so tired when packing that I forgot a tonne of stuff) was that I didn't get much of a chance to enjoy the fair and check out everyone else's stalls. Next year I'll be planning that part better!

If the idea of eating cupcakes and donating money to charity appeals to you then you can get involved with this little baketivist project by buying some cupcakes! They'll be back in WaiKikaMooKau Cafe on Kensington Gardens next Friday, the 29th, and you can always order boxes of cupcakes in 6's, 12's, or more, via my website for collection or delivery in the North Laine area.

Let's catch up!

I can't believe I haven't blogged about December's UK Vegan Food Swap yet. I had flu for about three weeks in December so I didn't get to try most of this tasty box of treats until last week. This was sent to me by Justine who as far as I know doesn't have a blog - leave me a comment if you do Justine & I'll link to it!

The first things I tried last month were the co-operative fairtrade peppermint creams, I'm a sucker for a peppermint cream and these were great. Nick inhaled the flapjack almost as soon as we opened the package & he thought it was great. I was super excited to see one of my favourite treats, a Jokerz bar, nestled within the contents of the box. They sell these at Infinity Foods but I don't buy them very often because they're pretty expensive.

I got tattooed last week and took the fruity gummy bears with me to keep my blood sugar up and the Moo Free bar & bag of dark chocolate soy-snacks are waiting for me to have my next chocolate craving.

Just before Christmas Nick and I went up to London to see the American Idiot musical, we pretty much got together because of Green Day - we met at work when I was 21 and we bonded over our love of 90's punk rock - so obviously we thought that the musical was amazing! We headed to Tibits before the show and I had this amazing plate of food. Onion rings, dal, pasta with butternut squash & greens, falafel, a tofu, apple & ginger salad, sweetcorn and a tasty olive filled roll.

The dal and the tofu, apple & ginger salad were the two standout dishes from this meal. I'd never tried either of them before and if I see them I'll definitely be getting them again. I obviously loved the onion rings, corn & falafel too, yum!

We were in luck with the dessert buffet too, they had the Sticky Toffee Pudding and a Chocolate Pudding. I didn't try the chocolate pudding but I love the sticky toffee pudding & I can't ever resist a piece if I see it on the food boat. I love that you can see Nick's spoon looming on the left side of this picture, I was going to edit it out but I thought it really summed up our eating out experiences - me snapping pic's and him wanting me to hurry up so he can eat!

We were kinda hungry again by the time we got the train home so we split a pasty from the West Cornwall Pasty Co. They only have one vegan pasty option, their wholewheat vegetable pasty but it's pretty darn good and, honestly, just being able to get a vegan pasty at the train station is good enough for me!

Their potato wedges are also vegan but I haven't tried them yet. You also have to be careful not to get the West Cornwall Pasty Co mixed up with The Cornish Pasty Company - their signage is almost exactly the same and the second place doesn't have vegan options. The West Cornwall Pasty Co is located around near platform 1 at London Victoria and on Duke Street in Brighton - the rest you'll have to find for yourselves!

My little one woman, not-for-profit, Operation Icing is still baking for local veggie cafe Waikikamookau. In December I made plenty of Black Forest Gateaux cupcakes...

Chocolate cake filled with black cherry jam & topped with vanilla frosting, a glacé cherry and dark chocolate shavings. 

...as well as loads of everyone's favourite, Peanut Butter Chocolate.

In other Operation Icing news I have my first ever stall (ever!) at Brighton VegFest on March 16th. I love Veg Fest, I go every year either to eat copious amounts of delicious food or to help my friend Mellissa, Ms Cupcake, out on her stall. I'm pretty nervous about baking the amount of cupcakes I'll need to bake in my tiny ten-cupcake-at-a-time oven but I'm mainly just excited about raising some money for animal charities and meeting loads of awesome people. Maybe I'll see you there?

I'm still cooking up a storm from Terry Hope Romero's Vegan Eats World, here's what I've made since my last post. This is the Pad See Ew, as soon as I saw this recipe I knew I'd be making it. Pad See Ew is my favourite Thai dish, I always order it at Pukk in NYC and I was amazed at how well it turned out. For some reason I'm the worst at stir fries but with Terry's directions I was confident that it'd be okay!

I had to do quite a lot of searching to find all of the soy sauces called for in this one but it was oh so worth it.

Nick & I also made the Tart Tatin. We cheated a little & used some store-bought pastry (Jus Rol) as we had some left over from making mince pies. This made the whole thing super simple although we found that our apples took quite a bit longer to caramelise than the recipe suggested.

This wasn't a problem, we just needed to be patient and really keep an eye on it. Terry says in the recipe that caramel can turn from something delicious to a burnt mess in seconds and I could see how easily this could've happened if we'd been distracted. This was unbelievably delicious, I always loved tart tatin in my pre-vegan days & I'm not sure why I'd never considered making a vegan version before. I love fruity desserts just as much as I love chocolatey ones & I can't wait to take this tart to the next level by whipping up the olive oil crust suggested in the book.

My favourite new years surprise was winning a copy of Amey's Yum Town zine over on her blog Vegan Eats & Treats.

I love Amey's blog, she's always making the most delicious looking food and, as you can see, her illustrations are adorable! I love her idea of making a yearly zine & I'm very tempted to give it a go myself this year, she even has this great zine making guide up on her blog.

More Cupcakes & the UK Vegan Food Swap.

My Monday theme kinda fell by the wayside today, I baked more cupcakes for WaiKikaMooKau this morning - Chocolate Peanut Butter and Speculoos Caramel.

Almost as soon as I'd finished shopping for more ingredients and washing up I got a text from the cafe to say that they'd sold out again! On a Monday! So, yeah, I kinda gave up on my theme and got baking again! I made twice as many this time and I'm really excited that this is going so well. I wish that I had a bigger kitchen so that I could co-ordinate baking and cooking for myself a little better, maybe I'll get the hang of it soon!

My UK Vegan Food Swap parcel turned up today, yay! It was full of so much lovely stuff and a really sweet note with explanations of all of the stuff in the package. I've been meaning to make some spring rolls with soy curls like these ones from Kittee's blog for a while now so I was super excited to find the wrappers in the package. On the right there are nori snacks, these little individually wrapped packets were the first thing I opened - I love nori and these are brilliant.

Also in the package were apple & strawberry fruit crisps, Moo Free chocolate drops, coconut flavoured Sesame Snaps and Seed & Bean lavender chocolate. I've never tried any of these things before and I'm super excited about them all.

Last but by no means least I pulled out a jar of Zest vegan pesto and some GranoVita Shiitake Pâté. I used to buy the Zest pesto all the time when I first went vegan but I haven't had it for ages and shiitake pâté is always a favourite of mine.

I love the UK Vegan Food Swap, I've never received a package I didn't love & as someone who loves both shopping and receiving post it's perfect. The swap is organised by To Happy Vegans & you can find out more information about it here.

Kinda not pie-day Friday!

Yeah yeah, I know, today's meant to be Pie-Day Friday. WTH?! Where's the pie? Um, technically there is no pie. It's okay though, I have loads of excuses!

Today I sold my first cupcakes to WaiKikaMooKau on Kensington Gardens. WaiKikaMooKau is one of my favourite local veggie cafes & I'm super excited to have cupcakes made by my little business on sale somewhere I've been frequenting for years. I last sold my cupcakes in a cafe about a year ago & I had a less than great experience. The cafe shall remain nameless but, long story short, I found out that the owner was homophobic so I refused to sell him any more of my cupcakes! Thankfully that cafe shut down and now I'm excited to be moving on and working with a much more awesome business.

Terrible picture right? But yay, my cakes in a cafe!

If you live in Brighton you'll be pleased to hear that my Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcakes will be on sale over the weekend.

Also (I may aswell keep the excuses coming!) I was selected to take part in the Ms Cupcake "Cakes By Post" trial & the goodies arrived today. We have two cupcakes, a Nanaimo bar and two maple pecan loaf cakes to nibble on. With all of that there's really no room for pie!

This evening Nick & I went out for dinner at Fanny's of Hanover where the Gourmet Girl's Pop Up Restaurant lives on a Friday night. It was Fish & Chip night and the menu looked like this:

Crumbed Garlic Mushrooms (my old Red Veg favourite)
'Cod' n Chips (duh!)
Apple Crumble Tart...

...that's technically a pie isn't it?! I promise to post about it tomorrow!

How you doin'?!

Looking at my blog recently you'd think that I never spend any time in Brighton! I really do, I promise! Recently I've been getting involved with my local pro-choice group Brighton Pro-Choice, we've been campaigning against Abort 67 who come all the way from their church in Worthing to harass people trying to use the local bpas clinic, real nice guys, keeping it classy. We've done information stalls, handed out leaflets, gathered signatures for our petition and we also held a fundraiser where we made dinner & cupcakes and showed the film Vera Drake.

I also helped out with another local feminist groups campaign, Brighton Feminist Collective arranged a local 40 Days for Treats campaign to counter the anti-choicers 40 Days for Life campaign. Every day people took treats to the clinic and I contributed some Operation Icing cupcakes...

...Vanilla Thumbprint Cookies from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur...

...and Isa's amazing Raspberry Truffle Brownies.

If you live in or around Brighton you can get involved in these campaigns too. This Thursday Brighton Feminist Collective are holding a Reclaim The Dance Floor fundraising night at The Blind Tiger with bands, DJ's, and stalls selling zines. Hopefully see you there! On April 15th Brighton Pro-Choice are holding a Carnival For Choice in Worthing, come along and make your pro-choice voice heard, details right here.

Just before I went away Veg Fest came to Brighton. Yay! I spent the first day hanging out with my PPK buddies eating food and then on Sunday I worked for the wonderful Ms Cupcake. Unfortunately all of this hanging out and working made me pretty slack at taking photos but there are a few. Me & Nick got there early on Saturday & my breakfast of choice was this tasty Black Forest cupcake from Sweetcheeks. It was a firm but moist gluten free treat and it actually made a great breakfast as the frosting wasn't too sweet.

After a walk around all of the stalls upstairs we went downstairs to see the lovely ladies from Veg Out. These guys are awesome and they catered our wedding so we always make sure to find them to say hi and to eat their delicious treats. This year they had loads of miniature food so of course we grabbed a plate to share.

We picked (clockwise from the back) the Avocado Lime Pudding, Chocolate Banana and Ginger Ganache, Sweet Potato Globe, Mini quiche, Frangipani Tart & a Mango Chocolate thing that I can't remember the name of. Everything was great but I think my favourites were the Avocado Lime Pudding and the Frangipani Tart. So damn good.

When lunchtime rolled around there wasn't a doubt in my mind about what I'd be eating, the fish & chips were top of my list! I'd never seen these guys at Veg Fest before & I was excited to try something new.

The fish was SO damn good, really, well, fishy! I went back for seconds.

There was plenty of other awesome food at the Fest, Vegusto were there with their plate of cheese samples, Amy's had samples of their soups, chilli, and more importantly, the gluten free Daiya mac & cheese. On Sunday I had a Wheaty kebab and a lot of Ms Cupcake treats, the new Peanut Butter Snap bars are to die for & I have a new favourite cupcake flavour, English Rose.

Brighton Bakery Operation Icing

So, whilst I'm good at writing reviews of other vegan businesses & praising the brilliant cupcakes made by other people I'm not so great at blowing my own horn. My little business Operation Icing was featured on wonderful new blog Vegans On The Move today so I thought that it was about time I wrote about it here.

I quit my job last year, I'd been working as a body piercer for 4 years & I'd started to hate everything about it to the extent that it was making me really miserable so I decided that it was time for a change.

I'd wanted to work for a vegan business or an animal rights charity for ages but I also loved the idea of working from home so I decided to set up a not for profit bakery. I bake everything myself in my tiny kitchen & I love every minute of it!

I'm going to let the interview on Vegans On The Move give you the lowdown on the business & just let the pictures speak for themselves here...

Vanilla Raspberry Swirl Mini Donut.

Double Chocolate Dream.

Coconut Lime.

Sweetie.

Speculoos Caramel Cookie.

Bourbon Biscuit.

If you live in or around Brighton and like to eat cupcakes and donate money to wonderful charities then please check out my website!

Brightons 1st Vegan Bake Sale

We held Brighton's first vegan bake sale last weekend & it was awesome! We had donations from vegan businesses, Ms Cupcake & Titbits Catering alongside fantastic goodies from local bakers. Kip, Holley & I had loads of fun on the day & we ended up raising £480 to be split between Sea Shepherd & local charity the East Sussex Wildlife Rescue & Ambulance Service.

We set up our stall outside local cafe WaiKikaMooKau, I really appreciate them letting us take up so much of their space on a busy Saturday afternoon, our table ended up having to be double the size I'd agreed with them because we just had SO MUCH stuff.

I made this awesome sign, I have no artistic skills but I'm okay with a pair of scissors & some double sided tape. Is it just me or does it look like it was made by a 5 year old?

Below you can see our cupcake stand with cupcakes made by me & Ms Cupcake, in front of the stand are choco coco oat balls & red pepper, thyme & tofu mini filo pastry quiches made by Laura Dakin the head chef on Sea Shepherd's ship, Spelt Courgette Muffins that I made using the recipe from the Babycakes cookbook, Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Cake by a local baker, more cupcakes, my gooey chocolate brownies & gluten free banana breads - another Babycakes recipe.

On the stand at the back are cookies donated by a couple of local bakers. We had double chocolate, peanut butter choc chip & orange. Yum! We packaged some up all pretty...

Here's a close up of the cupcakes! We have Earl Grey Tea & Crunchie by Ms Cupcake and then Peanut Butter Bombshell, Sweetie, Double Chocolate, Candy Cane Joe Joe & Raspberry by my very new business Operation Icing...I think I need to write a whole new blog post about that don't I?!

In the bottom right corner of that picture you can see Kip's delicious Shortbread & the Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies she made using the recipe in The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur. Kip also made the Gingerbread Biscotti with a lemon glaze which we were calling "magical sticks" by the end of the day thanks to a suggestion by one of our customers.

Kip also made Giant Peanut Butter Cookies which were really popular & Baked Bean & Cheezly Cornish Pasties, I bought one as soon as I saw them come out of her bag & they were SO delicious. I want to hire her to live in my house & make these for me every day!

Talking of popular, all of the cupcakes were totally sold out by 1:30! Next time I'll make 6 or 7 batches instead of 4.

Sadly I didn't manage to snap any pictures of them but halfway through the day we received a double chocolate & jam layer cake & four, yes four, chocolate cakes to add to our selection of goodies. It was perfect timing as we were just running out of cupcakes.

I'll leave you with a close up of my brownies & a glimpse at my business cards...more about that next time!

Head on over to Kips blog to see more pic's from the day, she even has pictures with people in them!