Four Cakes, One London

The Cake in London has always been top notch so Time Out recently decided to seeif the opposite was the case. Could London’s bakers really show off the London in cake? With the cover of Time Out as the prize, some of the capitals best bakers gathered for a cake off. The challenge? Create the ultimate London Cake. The result? Baking so delicious you’ll want head straight out to Covent Garden (just five minutes’ walk from The Piccadilly London West End Hotel)and buy yourself as many cakes as you can find.

The Giant Tea Cake

The team from the Shoreditch Women’s Institute, Daisy Cooney and SafiyaHafeji, baked a Chai Latte and Earl Grey Cake presented in a blue polka dotted teacup. A delicious light sponge cake, containing a layer of cream and apricot jam, infused with loose leaf tea throughout, and sealed over with some exquisite icing. Quite apart from being a moreish delight this excellent cake is designed to represent that most English tradition: Afternoon Tea. A beloved past time of the two bakers when they first moved to London afternoon tea was the treat that made the city start to feel like home. While the baking was top notch, the cake misses the prize by failing to properly represent London. Afternoon Tea is an English tradition to be sure, but not uniquely London’s.

The Bus Cake

Representing the old meets new nature of London is the Bus Cake from Adam Cox of Adam’s Cakes. The cake is a bright red London bus, in the new Routemaster design, sitting on a little circle of street waiting for Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Amy Winehouse, David Bowie and Paddington Bear to climb on board. The characters are intended to represent the varied nature of London’s people while simultaneously showing the mix of old and new;they also had to be recognisable as sugar characters. The confectionary combination works well. The decorations are made with a great attention to detail, though something is lost a in the conversion of Bowie to sugar, and underlying it all is an exceptional moist chocolate sponge.A thoroughly delicious and thoroughly London cake.

The Wedding Cake

Lily Jones of Lily Vanilli presents a home-grown historical cake of significant beauty. The cake is modelled on the stunning St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street; the inspiration for the original tiered wedding cake, a proposal present from a young pastry chef to the bakers daughter. Four tiers and a spire, all absolutely delicious, make up the pastry church. Not content with being drawn directly from English history, the cake is made with Truman’s porter, honey from London bees, and beetroot grown in an allotment near the Lily Vanilli bakery. The cake is exceptionally beautiful and delightful from window to steeple; that’s right even the decorative windows are edible, a tasty chocolate and peanut brittle. A delicious earthy fruitcake steeped and steepled in London history, this cake made the competition very difficult to call.

The Diversity Cake

Taking the cake, and the cover, is Jennifer Moseley’s (of The Modern Pantry) submission: The Diversity Cake. London is a multicultural city; one of the most culturally diverse in the world. Go a mile in any direction and you will meet at least 50 distinct cultures. Go further and meet more. More than any other feature, this is what makes London so great and so London. Jennifer Moseley understood this and demonstrated it incredibly in her submission. The Diversity Cake is a tiered and colourful cake, decorated with flowers picked from gardens around London. Each layer incorporates ingredients from communities across the world that are represented in the capital. Liquorice, garam masala, pomegranate molasses, Tonka bean, miso, amchur and many, many more ingredients went into making this a cake a subtle delight. With its exquisite flavours mixed into a classic Victoria sponge there can be no question that this cake is London inside and out. The victor is clear.