Cakes 'n' Treats (Camden, London)

I like cakes & I like treats. London's lacked a good vegan coffee shop for years now, so what's not to like?

I visited Cakes'n'Treats back in September, during its opening week. My experience was hopefully that of teething problems and not a reflection on normal trading. That said, it was dreadful enough to deter me from returning since.

Exhibit number #1:

Cake shouldn't look like that! It's not unreasonable to expect a vegan cake shop to be able to cook vegan cake properly, surely? The flavours were OK, but either the mixture was wrong or it was undercooked - if I'd make cake looking like that I'd have been too embarrassed to serve it. The person who owns the shop seems to make good looking cakes to order (if Facebook photos are anything to go by) - I hope they don't look like mine did when cut into!

Exhibit number #2:

At £3.90 their "Hazelnut Crunch Macchiato" is more expensive than the largest equivalent at airport/motorway service branches of Costa/Starbucks/Nero, independents (which tend to be cheaper) or any restaurant I remember visiting. It was terrible.

I couldn't taste hazelnut (syrup or otherwise). Assuming it was meant to be a latte macchiato (it bore no resemblence to caffè macchiato); there was no attempt at layering, other than beany tasting macrofoam floating on top of beany tasting coffee. What really 'topped it off' though was the sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts. WTF? Why would you want hazelnuts in your mouth whilst drinking coffee? It makes no sense and for me it totally didn't work.

I want to like Cakes'n'Treats - I hope their products have improved since my visit in September. I want them to succeed, which is partly why I waited several months before creating this post or writing on TripAdvisor / Facebook. Please, someone tell me things have gotten better since?

3 comments:

  1. Surprising that they think it's acceptable!!!

  1. Anonymous said...:

    Nope, no better - unless there has been an improvement in the past few weeks.

    I've visited twice, both times buying three or four cake slices (once a brownie too) to take home and was hugely disappointed. I think 7-8 different items I sampled were a pretty good representative of what their cakes are like and I'm certainly not planning to visit again. Not the light sponge I was expecting, not even dense sponge - undercooked and bread-pudding like. The stuff holding the layers together and covering the top was not frosting or cream but some sort of cream-like paste with barely any sweetness to it. Frankly I love cake but found these expensive as well as awful,

    I must admit I've been amazed to see the good reviews on Happy Cow and wondered if it was just a matter of different tastes, although I've never had such consistently bad cake anywhere. I'm so glad to read your review which reflects my experiences. Your photo is pretty much how all my cake slices looked, despite them looking so attractive and tasty from the outside.

  1. Anonymous said...:

    i ve been there several times and i am in love with their cakes. they are really really good and tasty. the english breakfast is awesome. i don´t understand why u don´t get in contact with them. you should give them a second chance, cmon its a vegan place and we should give any support. if the food was that bad, let them know. i am happy every time and i was shocked about this post. check out their postings on facebook, the pics there cant be fake. they have a great daily selection and many followers and lots of positive feedback. you should go there again/contact them instead of writing a post like this....

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