New cake-inspired programme on Radio 4

A good friend of ours just facebooked us to say he'd been listening to Radio 4 and up popped a new cake-inspired programme. Here's the blurb.

"Every Friday afternoon Maggie and her friends - modern, witty, perfectionist, confused, brave, afraid - put the rest of their lives on hold to bake cakes. Not ordinary baking but spectacular, remarkable, unique, cakes - to celebrate special occasions in their lives."

There's even a flickr group for you to upload your pics to. How web 2.0 is that fellow cake addicts?

By the way we're mid-20s not mid-50s, sorry about the mock-surprised webby remarks.

Treacle - Columbia Road, Shoreditch

I've been neglecting my Dick Van Dyke-Londoner duties of late, so decided to take a stroll down Columbia Road to top up the tourist points.

Nestled amongst the barrow-boy calling ("Three bunches for a fiver!!"), the ornamental pineapples and wilting Americans, is a very pleasingly-designed bakery. Though it's strictly take out - there's no where to perch.

Treacle is a pastel delight is a sugar-trap for any cupcake afficionado. They come in two sizes and, at the time of visiting, three flavours all nestled by colour in very gorgeous tiered drawers. All good so far, but, yes my friends, there is a catch.

The midget ones, though undeniably moreish and too-cute to resist, are a lip-smacking 90p. But judging by the amount of traffic, they must be raking it in!

My heavily pregnant companion had a vanilla one complete with sugar butterfly and I chose a glittered lemon bite. Disappointingly, they weren't as fresh as they could have been and they were a bit too sweet for my taste - a large one would have had me on a sugar high.

A nice accompaniment to a riot of flowers, but not one to go out of the way for.

http://www.treacleworld.com/
110-112 Columbia Rd, E2 7RJ
020 7729 5657

Cake break

It's not that we're anti the "c" word, in some instances it's better than tea - with pancakes for example. But there's something wholesome about tea and cake. Its very Englishness should be celebrated, mused upon and generally lauded as one of the nicest ways to while away an afternoon.

Now there's lots of reviews out there, but we couldn't find anywhere that brought it all together - how to bake them, where to buy them, where to go for some. So here's our resource for t&c appreciators. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.