My first experience of Yankee's Christmas Cupcake was a votive candle, It was one of the candles included in a Christmas gift box of Yankee votives I received last Christmas. Although the box looked too nice to open, I was looking forward to trying out the different festive fragranced candles inside.
After using the votive, I recently spotted Christmas Cupcake in stock in a branch of Collectables and purchased it again, but in wax tart format.

I do like the votive sampler candles and also the more expensive glass jars in the Yankee range, but my favourite purchase has to be the wax tart format as I believe these offer the best value for money in terms of strength of fragrance, besides being the cheapest Yankee product available. Indeed I have found the fragrance released from wax tarts generally tends to be stronger than the votives, tealights and often the glass jars too based upon my experience. Also by purchasing wax tarts it gives me the opportunity to sample the fragrances from the huge range available from Yankee without spending a lot of money, as these wax tarts are usually priced at between 99p - £1.25 per tart, depending on where you purchase them from. The tarts can also often be picked up in Yankee sales for as little as 50p. I have purchased a number of these from branches of Clintons when they have a sale.

Christmas Cupcake looks very festive with a snowman and festive cupcakes on the label. The fragrance is described by Yankee as an irresistible treat with a rich moist vanilla cupcake covered with sweet buttery holiday icing. Now, this is where this particular fragrance surprised me, as I am not a big fan of vanilla fragranced products and there have been one or two Yankee fragrances which include vanilla that I have not liked all that much. With Christmas Cupcake however, I was pleasantly surprised just how much its scent appealed to me as I held it to my nose whilst still in its wrapping. Whilst I could detect the vanilla, whatever else is blended with it here, has made it a very attractive fragrance. There are hints of spice and maybe nutmeg I thought. The scent was quite strong too, which usually indicates that you will get good longevity when burning I find.

The fragrance appears quite strong, even before removing the wrapping and usually this is a good indicator of the longevity of the fragrance, with the stronger scented ones lasting the longest I have found. Therefore I did think I would achieve the 8 hours burning time stated by Yankee with this one and maybe perhaps a little more, as this often happens with some of the stronger smelling wax tarts.

When placing the tart in my burner and lighting a tealight underneath, it was only a couple of minutes before I detected the scent beginning to appear in my room as the wax melted. Vanilla and spice is how I would describe it, but not too sweet. Instead it has a spicy musky fragrance with vanilla notes filtering through and the scent quickly filled the room.
Christmas Cupcake is one of the strongest fragrances I have experienced from Yankee. Its longevity after extinguishing the tealight also was impressive as the scent hung in the air for quite some time.
I also achieved the 8 hours of fragrance you can expect to achieve from burning a wax tart and this one actually surpassed that, giving me around 11 hours of fragrance before it began to fade.

Yankee suggest you try mixing the fragrances together to create your own unique fragrance and this is something I keep meaning to do but haven't got around to as yet. It is also suggested that you can leave a wax tart in its wrapping and use it as a drawer scenter and this is something I often do. I always pop them in my drawers until I am ready to use them.

I was also impressed with this fragrance in its votive format. I have had mixed experiences using votives and would always prefer the wax tart instead as I mentioned earlier, but I am pleased to say that on this occasion the votive was actually very good. Yankee state you can experience around 15 hours of burn time from a votive candle and this was indeed an accurate statement in this case. I can honestly say I did have 15 hours of fragrance from the votive, although for the last couple of hours, it was slightly weaker as the scent was fading.
The good thing about Yankee votives, which is also a sign of the good quality of Yankee products, is that the wax burns evenly and does not form a well in the middle.

I will definitely purchase Chiristmas Cupcake again, it is a lovely fragrance to use over the autumn and winter months as well as the festive period of course.In fact I'd be happy to have this fragrance burning all year round!
It is available from all Yankee stockists online as well as Amazon and Ebay and can be found in department stores, as well as card and gift shops such as Clintons and Collectables.
The wax tarts are priced around 99p - £1.25 on average and votives around £1.45 - £1.75 each.