Cake Club is the creation of 4 ladies with their own businesses, Dolly of Dolly's Cupcakes,
Charmaine of By Charmaine,
Suzi of SpongecakesSuzebakes &
Laura from Enchanted Cupcakes.
Our aim is to create a one stop shop for advice, classes and all other aspects of the cakey world, starting by taking Facebook by storm!
The first rule of cake club is "get involved" so what better way to do that than to get involved with 4 of the top cake venues in London!
It could have all gone wrong before it even began, Laura got stuck for 4 1/2 hours in snow in Sussex the previous evening and even had to abandon her car, Dolly passed out and hit her head and ended up with concussion and Charmaine had been poorly for a few days! But us cake makers are a determined bunch and we wouldn't let anything ruin our plans!
So on the coldest day in March, we made our way to Victoria, a group of enthusiastic strangers who had only really met in the virtual world of Facebook! It took numerous phone calls and a swish of bright pink hair to find each other (thankfully Suzi had recently died her hair pink or we might still be searching for each other!)
Our first stop was the infamous Peggy Porschen Cakes, where, armed with our personalised Goozeberry Hill cake forks we were ready to eat cake!
Now we will be honest and tell you that we had heard mixed reviews about the cupcakes we were about to sample so we were pleasantly surprised by the moist and taste packed cakes we chose and you can see there wasn't much left at the end!
If you are planning on visiting Peggy's be warned, it is a small venue with not much space and only a handful of tables but it is so worth the visit! We highly recommend their champagne and strawberry cake which was to die for!
We did spot the "macaroon" mistake always highlighted by Jen of Jens Just Desserts so we snapped a shot for her! Even Peggy Porschen's can't get the spelling right!
But however you spell it, they still look delicious don't they!
After lots of photos we finally managed to drag ourselves away from Peggy's beautiful shop to venture on to Choccywoccydoodah where we were met by some of the most artistic and decadent cake you will ever see.
The shop is an eclectic mix of cakes and chocolate in every colour and shape you can imagine, from the beautiful to sublime! There was even a lady in a bath, which of course you would expect to see in a cake shop wouldn't you?? Definitely a place you MUST visit if in London or Brighton and the most fabulously funny staff you can imagine! We sampled their coconut cake which is made using vegetable oil and it was beautifully moist with a subtle, light flavour.
From choccywoccy it was a quick tube to Nordic Bakery, a Scandinavian style cafe who make all their goods on site fresh every day. We were met by their lovely manager who spent time telling us about all their wonderful authentic products from butter buns to Tosca Cake and Gravadlax to Karelian Pie! All the ingredients used at Nordic are sourced from reliable organic suppliers. The atmosphere inside was buzzing but relaxed, then perfect location for lunch!Their biggest seller though is their Cinnamon buns which are baked throughout the day, sometimes selling out as soon as a batch is brought through from the kitchen and its not hard to guess why, just walk into their cafe and you are met with a wonderful warm spicy cinnamon scent, what could be better!
Of course we couldn't leave empty handed so Laura and Suzi stocked up on cinnamon buns for the day! If you are a fan of rye bread and organic local produce, do make a trip to Nordic, you won't be disappointed.
Our final destination was Konditor and Cook at Waterloo, a bustling bakery with the most beautiful display of cakes and chocolates you've ever seen! Their bakes ranged from huge pink raspberry meringues to indulgent curly whirly cupcakes in every flavour you can imagine, even chocolate and Guinness cupcakes with Baileys buttercream, perfect for St Patricks Day!  |
| Dolly & Rick Astley! |
The staff there are friendly and helpful and could even hold a tune which we found out when Dollys mobile rang and we were treated to a blast of Rick Astleys "Never gonna give you up" - at this point its probably a good idea to say that Dolly loves Rick Astley nearly as much as she loves cake!
We were lucky enough to be invited into the kitchens to try our hand at decorating our own "magic cakes". Magic Cakes are one of Konditor & Cook's signature cakes, small square sponge cakes covered in marzipan and a fondant glaze, they are delicious!
We were also delighted to have a chance to see how they create their infamous cone cakes with chocolate sponge and lashings of ganache and were shocked to see they had baked sixteen 8" and 10" sponge cakes for one cone cake!!
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| A complete cone cake |
Konditor and Cook are about to open their own cake school where you can also learn how to decorate magic cakes and cookies!
The bakery is certainly worth a trip if you are in London and is quite possibly our new favourite place! If you are planning to sample their cakes do bear in mind that it is a take away venue with no tables so stock up on all their delights before you leave!
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| Our decorated Magic Cakes! |
All in all it was a wonderful day full of a lot of laughs, a lot of learning and of course a lot of cake! Facebook friends have now become firm friends and the goals for Cake Club have been set in place so watch this space to see what we have in store for you!
You can follow these venues on Facebook following these links...
Konditor & Cook
Choccywoccydoodah
Nordic Bakery
Peggy Porschen Cakes
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