So what happened to dear old fairycakes?
A few years ago, cupcakes silently crossed the Atlantic from the USA and landed on the unguarded beaches of Blighty.
The merciless American impostors silently dispatched fairycakes in our bakeries before coldly assuming their identities.
Cupcakes are perhaps a little more decorative – typical of Americans to needlessly make something bigger – but otherwise they’re fairycakes.
We don’t care about fairycakes, I hear you say. Get to the scones, you add.
The reason I mention the pudding-based insurgency is the range on offer at Cup Tea Lounge, in Glasgow.
One of their menus is a selection of incredible-looking cupcakes which is almost enough to tempt you away from a scone. Almost.
There are two other Cup venues around Glasgow – the Tea Room and the Tea Garden – but it’s the Lounge on Renfrew Street your Scone Spy visited on a weekday afternoon.
It’s a converted financial building from the 19th Century, typical of Glasgow city centre, complete with ornate ceilings a country mile above your head.
It’s all archways and Victorian tiling on the walls.
Cup seems like a respite for women who have been pounding the shopping precincts, and waiters bring them refreshments in the form of big, wooden, Ikea-style tea stands decorated with treats.
We start with ham and lentil soup and half a sandwich – a club sandwich for your Scone Spy, roast beef and horseradish butty for my companion.
The sandwiches are well done and the lentil soup is lovely.
It’s unfortunately a wee bit chilly, but the unflinchingly polite waiter is at hand to replace it with piping hot soup before we can complain.
While I go for a scone, my companion tries a cupcake.
Harrumph – may as well raise the stars and stripes above Holyrood and call ourselves the 51st State.
To take the treacherous edge off it, they order a Scottish “Tea” Cupcake – which is honey-flavoured with Scottish Rooibos flavoured icing.
There are four types of scone on offer, so I go for a Maple Glazed Ginger Scone with double cream and jam.
The scone is a big knobbly handmade number, and boy is it gingery.
It’s so very ginger. It’s more ginger than Gordon Strachan drinking a can of Old Jamaica while walking very gingerly.
And it’s a bit lovely.
The imperialist Yankee cupcake sadly, is all mouth and no pants.
With a flourish of frosting it looks the part – but neither the honey or Rooibos flavour really comes through, sadly.
Our soup, sandwich, tea and dessert comes to £22 which is a decent price, and cheap when you think about it.
After all, we may have lost the Cupcake War — but they’ll never take our scones.
Cup Tea Lounge, Renfield St, Glasgow
Warm Welcome: 9/10 Location, Location: 9/10 Scone Score: 7/10
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