Patisserie Valerie Create-a-Cake

This summer I’ve been celebrating my blog’s 3rd birthday. Three years is a pretty long time in blog years… I mean, three years ago, blogging wasn’t even really ‘a thing’. Over the past 6 – 12 months the blogosphere has exploded with new blogs (which I personally think is a great and such a positive thing for online ventures). However, as an ‘old timer’ of the blogging world I thought it only fair that I treat myself to a little celebration, and what better way to do that than with a beautiful celebration cake by the bespoke Patisserie Valerie Create-a-Cake service*.

Patisserie Valerie is pretty much my favourite cake shop ever. I mean – LOOK at those beauties! I took these photos on my last visit there, and the creations were no exception. They are known for creating luxurious cream cakes and confectionaries and having been around since 1926, they’ve earnt their place in the world of luxury cakes. I’ve visited them a couple of times for a treat myself and can vouch for how delicious their snacks are. Eclairs, gateus and cheesecakes, oh my!

The Patisserie Valerie Create-a-Cake service is a whole new world of cake-making. An online service that let’s your create your own bespoke celebration cake, it’s a really lovely featuer and one that I think makes Patisserie Valerie a whole lost more accessible to an online audience (me!). To celebrate Lily Kitten’s 3rd Birthday, I went all out on my celebration cake, choosing exactly all the ingredients I would LOVE in my dream cake. The online service is so easy to use, highly customisable (you can choose the type of sponge, to the type of decorations, to the type of filling, even to the ribbon colour!) and all you need to do is collect the cake at a Patisserie Valerie location of your choice. Easy peasy!

Say hello to the most beautiful cake you’ve ever seen! This is everything I could ever want in a cake and more. It’s my perfect cake. And I created this cake all myself (well, not quite, but I designer it). Cake cake cake – did I mention I love this cake? Although this is a completely bespoke cake and one that I pretty much took full advantage over creating – yes I did add every option possible – it only came to £33.50. I reckon that’s a pretty fair price for a special occasion cake, bearing in mind the quality of the creation and how much other bespoke cakes can set you back… It’s definitely not unheard of to go to birthday parties where a custom cake costs £100 or so.

As you can see, I went for a pretty chocolately-affair – it would have been rude not to! The outside of the cake is decorated in ‘milk chocolate cigarettes’ and held together by a beautiful red ribbon. I just think it looks so special, and the ‘cigarettes’ (funny name) are just as delicious as they look. Some may think that the chocolate dipped strawberries on top of the chocolate icing may have been too much, but my friend, you would be wrong. It was definitely chocolate heaven and when savoured in a small slice, it wasn’t too much at all. In fact, this cake is meant to service 6 people – honestly, I reckon we got double the amount of slices out of it and it lasted us around 4 or 5 days.

The inside of the cake was just as delicious as the outside. I chose chocolate sponge (obviously) and went for a top layer filling of fresh cream, and a bottom layer filling of chocolate cream (duh). I really loved how you could choose different layers of filling, and you could even add fruit fillings to the inside if you wished. I did wish, and added strawberries inside the cake to compliment the beautiful dipped strawberries on top. I actually really liked the strawberry filling – you didn’t get loads, but just enough to give the cake a little bit of a kick, to help prevent from chocolate-overload. I reckon filling it with forest fruits or blueberries would be lovely and refreshing too!

Over all, I really loved my Patisserie Valerie Create-a-Cake experience. Having loved Patisserie Valerie anyway, I did expect to enjoy it, but the service surpassed my expectations as it was just so easy and affordable to create such a lovely special occassion treat. Honestly, I would recommend this to anyone looking to spoil a special somebody – or, like me, just indulge your sweet tooth to a whole other level. Go on, treat yo’self!