Buttercup Cake Shop
16 St. Alban’s Grove, W8 5BP
Nearest Tube: High Street Kensington
www.buttercupcakeshop.co.uk
020 7937 1473
Expect to Pay: £2.50 for a cupcake
Buttercup Cake Shop is tucked away on a lovely wee side street in the heart of posh Kensington. From the High Street Kensington tube stop, you pass T.S. Eliot’s house on the way – there, now it’s a cultural bakery visit.
See those cupcakes in that photo above? They are, without a doubt, the most ambrosial, life-altering, and, to borrow a word from Will Ferrell, scrumptrulescent cupcakes we have ever had the pleasure of packing onto our waistline. The nectar of those athletic, lithe gods may have been wine or whatever, but the nectar of the jovial, zaftig ones was definitely Buttercup’s frosting.
This bakery has it all down pat – an inviting pastel green shop front straight out of a film set, a spic-n-span, bright wooden interior, an appetizing array of cupcakes handmade daily in a multitude of flavours, and a can-do staff attitude: when he noticed that there were no cookies ‘n’ cream cupcakes left in the display case, Cupcake Hero Man prepared one for us on the fly. We sampled the Elvis (peanut butter frosting with delightfully chewy banana-bread cake), red velvet, pure vanilla, and the winner of them all, cookies ‘n’ cream. The cake is soft, moist, and hearty while the frosting (versus 'icing,' in which butter is noticeably absent) is American-style-best: gooey, thick, sweet and buttery, just the way nature intended it. Good luck stopping at one. We didn’t.
by Kira Hesser
