Cutter & Squidge - Cake Pop-up in Soho

Dear Readers, 

Last week I discovered a hidden sugar-gem in the heart of London's Soho. 

Located on the corner of Wardour Street and Brewer Street in the glass-fronted corner shop that used to be (I think) 'Shop' - my favourite ever Soho boutique run by Pippa Brooks from Britop era indie band Posh - you will find the Cutter & Squidge Soho cake cafe pop-up! It is the perfect location for post-shopping cake eating and re-fuelling. 

Formed by two sisters with the desire to make cakes without food colouring but also without any compromise on taste (which as regulars will know is exactly my aim at Silver Whimsy where if something is pink, that's because it has raspberries or strawberries in it rather than something man-made), Cutter & Squidge have, as well as making dreamy Dream Cakes (which get bonus Whimsy points for having whimsically brilliant names), invented their very own creation called the Biskie which is not a whoopie pie or a macaron (according to their website) but a "moorish blend of crisp, soft, chewy cakey and creamy delivering a massive flavour fiesta!" 

(I'm pretty sure that there's a noun missing from that adjective heavy sentence, grammar pedants, but nevermind.)

Whilst I didn't go for a 'Biskie', I will be going back for one because not only do they look divine and have amazing names like 'The Ambassador', 'I Scream Sundae' and 'Bounty Hunter', but based on having sampled a slice of Dream Cake I am convinced they will be delicious.

In the pop-up Soho shop at the moment, they are also serving soft-scoop ice cream in the vein of The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop, which regular readers will know is the ultimate Whimsy Ice Cream favourite. So if it happens to be a sunny day in Soho, why not pop in for an ice-cream pick-me-up?

But let's move on to the CAKES! The cakes in Cutter & Squidge are American style Magnolia Bakery triple layered baking extravaganzas. This is Very Exciting because it is actually pretty hard to find a decent slice of cake in London, let alone fantasy American buttery vanilla old-fashioned wonder cakes! 

I plumped for a piece of the Ice Cream Dream Cake which the delightful girl in the cafe told me was modelled on an old-school Neopolitan ice cream and it genuinely was! The flavours were almost Proustian - the dense, dark, moist chocolate sponge, the super-light ultra creamy and refreshingsly strawberry frosting and the vanilla bean cream-dream flavour sponge and frosting all combined to re-create that sense of running through sprinklers in your best friend's garden after a long hot school holiday summer day in the sunshine.

 As if the cake couldn't get any cuter, it comes resplendent with a mini ice cream cone filled with more of the melt-in-your-mouth strawberry frosting, covered in mini strawberry sugar strands. I haven't felt this way about a piece of cake that I haven't actually made myself for a very long time: I genuinely want to go back and work my way through all the varieties of cake that Cutter & Squidge have to offer!

Follow them on twitter / instagram / facebook OR (best option) go and visit them in Soho before the pop-up pops-down!

#Biskie,
Silver Whimsy x

PS - goes without saying (but is nonetheless very important to say) that their cakes are only made with free range eggs and proper British butter!! 

The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop

Dearest Readers,

It has become something of a Whimsy tradition that when overseas, I provide you with a review of an ice cream shop. (Well, it's a tradition in my head anyway and that's good enough for me.)

Thus, I write with news of Ice Cream Wonder across the Atlantic - Big Gay Ice Cream Wonder from, where else, The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop in New York's East Village.

The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop started out life as a food truck whizzing around the streets of NYC but, owing to demand, became an-all-year-round ice cream wonder palace in 2011. It's a tiny walk-in shop with a permanent queue outside in the amazing East Village. 

The inside of the shop is the definition of whimsy. There is a giant glittering Unicorn on the wall, and My Little Pony ephemera dotted about the shop. 

I was particularly taken by the multi-coloured cat chalk board next to the menu. 

The menu itself, modelled here by the SIBF, is a thing of sheer joy. I didn't have sufficient time to peruse it, unfortunately, so sort of panic-ordered an ice cream I wouldn't normally go for, but it was still amazing.

The thing about Big Gay Ice Cream is that it's a playful variation on traditional American 'soft-serve' ice cream. Ie Posh Mr Whippy. But better. A million times better. The joy is that the soft-serve itself is beyond delicious - creamy, air-whip-light and flavoursome - but that on top of the ice cream, the toppings are imaginative, exciting and generously portioned. In much the same way I would suggest that eye make-up is all about the glitter, Big Gay Ice Cream is all about the toppings. But I digress. 

I ordered the Rocky Roadhouse - a chocolate ice cream covered in rocky road topping comprising of marshmallows, dark chocolate chips and salted almonds. The ice cream takes its name from Patrick Swayze's 1989 movie Road House and serves as a tribute to the late great man himself. The combination of the crunchy nuts, the chewy marshmallow, the super-soft-serve ice cream and the bitey choc chips was A-may-zing (as Craig Revel Horwood might say if he were judging ice cream rather than dancing).

The SIBF ordered the American Globs which is possibly the quintessential Big Gay Ice Cream as it is 'dipped'. This means that the entire ice cream is dipped in a vat of hot chocolate sauce which then dries and creates a hard outer shell - like what a Magnum tries to do but fails. If someone decided to come up with this idea and sell it here they would make their fortune because once eaten no other ice cream is the same. On top of this, the American Globs featured dark chocolate salty-sweet pretzels dotted throughout it and its name is a tribute to Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' making it ice cream nirvana! 

Anyway, you go in, order your Big Gay Ice Cream, leave and find a stoop to sit on and eat it. Alternatively, you could take your ice cream into Tompkins Square Park, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you like eating ice cream with rats crawling round yr feet. (Not the definition of whimsy.) 

 The trouble is that now that I've had my Big Gay Ice Cream and eaten it, how will I ever go back to ice cream of any other variation?

Coming up next: The Secret Cocktail Bars of NYC #2.

Happy Days,
Whimsy x