UK's Favourite Cupcake Flavours: Red Velvet, Carrot, Lemon

Ask the search bar what Britain wants from a cupcake and the answer comes back with surprising clarity. A small handful of flavours pull tens of thousands of searches every month, while dozens of perfectly worthy contenders barely register. I bake ten flavours as boxes of twelve, so I went and read the numbers properly, and it turns out three of mine sit right at the top of the country's list.

So this is the story of those three. What the data says about each one, how I bake mine, and how a box of them gets from my kitchen in Peterborough to any front door on the UK mainland.

Red velvet, the one the whole country agrees on

Start with the loudest signal. The words red velvet cake are typed into Google around sixty thousand times a month in the UK, which puts the flavour in the top three or four cake searches in the country. And it is not just the search bar. Walk into any of the big cupcake shops and red velvet is the one on the front table, the one they call the bestseller, the one that gets a category to itself. No other cupcake flavour has that kind of unanimous pull.

Mine is a proper red velvet cupcake, with the little tang of buttermilk that stops the colour being the only thing going on. On top there is white chocolate buttercream, white chocolate curls, and a scatter of red velvet crumb made from the sponge trimmings, so nothing goes in the bin and the top of the cake tells you exactly what is underneath it. You can have six in a mixed box, or order the whole twelve in red velvet and watch how quickly a room deals with them.

(the search bar does not lie, and the search bar wants red velvet)

Carrot cake, the quiet heavyweight

Carrot cake matches red velvet almost exactly in the search data, at roughly sixty thousand UK searches a month, and the phrase carrot cake recipe scores just as high again, which tells you people do not merely fancy it, they are actively plotting it. When two thousand Brits were surveyed about their favourite cake, carrot came third in the whole country. For a flavour that never shouts, that is a remarkable set of numbers.

My carrot cake cupcake is carrot, cinnamon and a little nutmeg, kept properly moist, under a cinnamon buttercream that picks up the spice in the sponge so it tastes of one thing rather than two. There is a real toasted walnut on top, and the allergen label says so plainly, because a nut should never be a surprise. It is the flavour that wins over the relatives who claim they would rather have something savoury.

Lemon, Britain's actual number one

Here is the one that surprises people. When researchers ranked two hundred and forty nine cakes by how often the UK searches for them, the winner was not chocolate and it was not red velvet. It was lemon drizzle, ahead of everything. Two separate national surveys of two thousand adults have crowned lemon Britain's favourite cake flavour too. The country's sweet tooth is sharper than it lets on.

If you love a lemon drizzle, my lemon cupcake is that same sharpness in cupcake form. Lemon sponge with a spoon of lemon curd hidden in the middle, so the first bite is brighter than the look of it suggests, then lemon buttercream on top. It is the one that disappears first at a summer table and the one most people ask me for by name.

How to order the country's favourites

Every flavour on this page comes as a box of twelve, baked fresh for your order. You can fill the box with one flavour, or build a mixed box with two flavours, six of each, which is the diplomatic answer when one half of the household wants lemon and the other half will riot without red velvet. A box is £42, you pick the day it arrives at the checkout, and it travels by DPD courier anywhere on the UK mainland. If a whole cupcake feels like the wrong shape for the person you are sending to, a letterbox brownie box, a sliced lemon loaf cake or a box of six letterbox cookies fits straight through the door, and my guides to letterbox cakes by post and cookies by post explain how. I have written up everything about my Letterbox Lemon Cake, including how it compares with a lemon pound cake. Shopping for December instead? My guide to Christmas fruit cake and Christmas cookie gifts covers the festive boxes, and Christmas gifts by post covers sending them.

If you are in Peterborough

Collection is free, and it means your cupcakes never see the inside of a courier van at all. And if you are planning something bigger than a box, a party or a full dessert table, my made-to-order cupcakes can be matched to any colour and theme you like. For the savoury side, my guide to party food to order covers sandwich platters and the rest.

The short version: the country has voted, with its search bar and its surveys, and the podium reads red velvet, carrot cake and lemon. I bake all three, in small batches, from recipes passed through the years. The only question left is which six and which six.

Written by Sploffin, a small-batch bakery in Peterborough. Questions about an order? The FAQ answers most of them.