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!! 

Caketastic Conran!

Dear Readers,

Who knew that inside the Conran Shop on Marylebone High Street secret delicious cake was hiding out?! (Probably several of you but nevermind.)

Imagine my delight when, out and about in London town and desperate for a slice of cake, I discovered that nestling within the deluxe furniture, open-plan, air-conditioned Conran shop there was an equally pleasant cafe.

At the back of the shop you will find a spacious, clean, well-lit, welcoming and comfortable cafe serving the most delicious coffee in beautiful porcelain cups and saucers (with matching milk jugs, natch) with an excellent crema on top and a smooth rounded finish along with a sumptuous range of prettily decorated and divinely tasty cakes.

It appears that this cafe is yet to be discovered by freelancing Mac-addicts, so it makes the perfect place to retire with a good book and/or traditional notebook and pen for some solo reading and writing. The tables are, as you would expect at the Conran Shop, rendered to a very high standard, the chairs mismatched and well designed and the staff friendly and pleasant.

But let's admit it, it was really all about the cake. I plumped for the triple-layered Strawberry and Champagne Cake and am now trying to work out a recipe for it as it is up there with the nicest cafe-bought cakes I have had in a long while.

It's hard to capture the taste of champagne within a cake, but they have actually managed to do this! The sponge itself was super-light, almost melting (which is a hard effect to achieve) and delicately flavoured with strawberries and a dazzle of sparkling champagne pop on the tongue! Obviously, the real Champagne flavour comes from the elegant icing - marshmallow fluffy, spun-sugar soft and perfectly proportioned in relation to the cake itself - and the strawberry flavour from the sticky-coulis-style jam between the layers. Genuinely a triumph of a cake - perfect for high summer!

And just in case you are not fully sated from the cake itself, there is a wonderfully dark strawberry champagne truffle a-top the cake for a final chocolatey-flavour-bomb finish!

Delicious.

Champagne and Summer,
Silver Whimsy x

'Issy's Milky Way'

Dear Readers,
Just a quick post. Building up to TSWCS 3.0 is a thirsty business and, in a deviation from the norm, I felt inclined to go in search of a milkshake. (Once, at university, I formed the Midnight Milkshake Association where we would search for the magical milkshake diner where the light never went out. But I digress.)

Welcome to 'Issy's Milky Way'  featuring everything you could possibly need for a recreation of a 1950s summer date!

 What better way to refresh than with a delicious, thick shake made with Marine Ices ice cream? Especially when 'Issy's Milky Way' is situated in the Camden Passage where you can spend a few minutes before or after enjoying the vintage treats and antiquities that grace the quaint street. You can also look out for Noel Fielding who we we saw walking past during our teatime treat!

 It is out of the ordinary for a 'Confessions' blog to feature a non-coffee related beverage, but with a menu like this one, how could I resist? I didn't try the cakes, but there were some promising looking brownies, and the coffees being drunk next to us looked suitably old skool.

 Back to baking now though,  TSWCS 3.0 preparations never end!

Magic and milkshakes,

Whimsy x

PS Check out my silver glitter nail polish in the pic above! Fashion Joy!