Where to Find the Best Cupcakes in Toronto

(This post was completed for a web feature assignment in my Online Magazines course in the Book & Magazine Publishing program at Centennial College.)

(photo by bookgrl)

Once a popular sweet ending to a child’s birthday party, the standard Betty Crocker chocolate cupcake with rainbow sprinkles has recently undergone a massive makeover. Specialty cupcake shops now create beautiful (and delicious!) works of art with ingredients as exotic as lavender and matcha tea powder for celebrity customers such as Ringo Starr and Katie Holmes (and little Suri!).

As a self-proclaimed cupcake connoisseur, I perform taste tests at cupcake shops in every city I visit, I read cupcake blogs regularly, and I even bake my own cupcakes from scratch. The worldwide popularity of cupcakes has touched down in Toronto with more than a dozen “cupcakeries” in the downtown area alone. But where are the best places to go when you’re in need of a mini-cake fix? Read on for my four favourite cupcake spots in T.O.

Web 2.0 for Magazines

(This post was completed as a web 2.0 analysis for my Online Magazines course in the Book & Magazine Publishing program at Centennial College.)

1. New York Magazine
The New York Magazine website stands out from the crowd as an exemplary online magazine due to its wide array of web 2.0 features. Visitors to the online version of this print magazine become active participants in the website’s offerings through RSS feeds of articles, blogs on various themes including food and entertainment, bookmarking tools, streaming video, and sidebar widgets for tags and popular posts.

All of these tools enable readers to have an interactive visit to the New York Magazine website, rather than a passive one. Tools such as the RSS feeds and blogs are of great benefit to the publisher and editors of the website as they are efficient ways to deliver content to the reader. The bookmarking tools at the bottom of each article act as an easy way for the reader to share the magazine’s content with others, thus increasing traffic to the website. The New York Magazine website also features sidebar widgets for popular tags and posts. This function can be very helpful from a marketing and advertising point of view because it is an easy way to determine what readers are most interested in.