Another weekend without obvious plans, except for the fact that most (if not quite all) of the shops, cafés, and takeaways near us have reopened. So, in the spirit of "eat out to help out" and similar schemes, we decided to tick a bunch of them off our "to try" lists and go on a cake crawl (basically a beer crawl, only with cake 😁).
First stop was our neighbour's deli, La Pizzeca, mainly just to browse. It was a little cream-based for me, but Alison picked up a very tasty Italian vanilla custard cake. From there it was on to the newly opened Ta'Mini, a Lebanese bakery with a diverse selection and absolutely no way to marry it up with the signage. Luckily they offered a selection box so we went for that. Okay, yes, this was savoury not sweet, but it's still baked so it counts! Plus, it was delicious. We got six pieces of pastry, each filled with something different, from feta and spinach, to chilli-lamb mince, to turkey and hard cheese (my favourite). I'll be back, that's for sure.
We went hard-sweet next with Flavourtown, a cupcake specialist we've tried once before, but who always have new options on the menu. Al saved her Lemon Meringue for later (which had an actual lemon meringue balanced on the top!) but I gobbled down my slightly off-piste choice of Cookie Dough (choc chip cupcake, cookie base, sprinkles, and a lot of cookie dough icing). Out one door and straight into Jack & Beyond for a slice of Chai Tea Cake (surprisingly light and thankfully not too sweet) with fruit juice, then zig-zagging back over the road to Gail's for a shared savoury sausage roll and Reuben (plus mouth-watering pecan, banana, and maple cake that was put to one side for me later).
Unfortunately, that brought our sweet treats to an end, as the next couple of places were still closed (another day it is). The vague original plan had been to head up towards the Chelsea hospitals for a crepe, but when we got there it didn't seem worth it. We did, however, pick up our favourite smoked salmon bagel from B Bagel Bakery, before wandering into Brompton Cemetery to nibble it whilst watching the local squirrels foraging. Again, we could have grabbed a cake from Brompton's own café, but the queues were beginning to get going, so just looped back up through Brompton and down Munster Road. We popped into a few more places, but most had run low on stock, and ended up with empty hands (apart from a last-minute Irn Bru) for the final mile.
Still, it was a fun way to spend the middle of the day and I can't help but feel that we had to skip just enough (mainly due to queues) for it to be worth repeating in the future 🤤
