New cupcake recipes from the Hummingbird Bakery It was in the early 2000s that the world really started to go crazy for cupcakes. Not long after Sarah Jessica Parker was shown happily munching one in Sex and the City, you could barely move in London or New York for trendy bakeries offering the sugary treats in every flavour under the sun. Something about them - be it the way they reminded us of our childhood or, later, their cheeriness in a time of economic crisis - simply made our tastebuds tingle. But trends, like an overcooked cake, are by their nature liable to crumble. These days, the queues outside cupcake shops are decidedly shorter, and food lovers' favourite game is to speculate over what the next "cake fad" will be, be it cake pops (tiny morsels of cake on sticks), donuts or those teeth-gnashingly sweet American confections, whoopie pies. Last year, London baker Lily Vanilli stopped selling cupcakes, arguing they were synonymous with style over substance: "Customers would come into the bakery, and if they saw cupcakes they would automatically make an assumption about who you were - and it was usually negative." None the less, cupcake-making remains a big business. Last year, sales in Britain grew by 3.9 per cent to reach a whopping £23.5million, and one of the bakeries that spearheaded the trend in Britain is still going strong. The Hummingbird Bakery was set up by Briton Tarek Malouf in Portobello Road in 2004, after a stint working in America made him realise that the indulgent, frosting-loaded cakes loved by our cousins across the pond were missing from the UK market. Cupcakes - particularly the bakery's red velvet and vanilla varieties - were a staple from the start, and the company (which now has branches across London) sells trays upon trays of them each day. Does Malouf think the trend shows any sign of slowing down? Most definitely not. "I think we can safely say that people have developed a taste for cupcakes and I believe they're here to stay," he insists. "When we first opened, most people who came in hadn't heard of cupcakes and I was even advised by several people to stop selling them because "they'd never catch on'. But here we are, nine years later, with four more bakeries in London and one in Dubai. None the less, he works hard to introduce new recipes to his bakeries to keep his customers interested - ideas for which can come from anywhere. "Recipes for our limited edition daily specials collections can be inspired by anything from fairground toffee apples to a mug of hot chocolate: nothing is too crazy, so long as it tastes good," he explains. We are very lucky to have a product development team who test out new cupcake recipes for us. They've been working with us from the beginning, so they know what is likely to hit the mark in terms of flavours and ingredients, as well as being familiar with what our customers tend to go for. A few weeks ago, Home Sweet Home, the third book of Hummingbird recipes, was published. It offers a variety of treats to cook at home, from Chicago-style fudge cake to peanut and chocolate cookies - but one can't help but suspect it is the cupcake recipes that readers will be rolling up their sleeves to get making first. The death of the cupcake, it seems, is a long way off. 'The Hummingbird Bakery Home Sweet Home' by Tarek Malouf is published by Harper Collins, £20