Cute. Adorable. Chic. Trendy. Retro. All these words are perfec for the Primrose Bakery shop in Covent Garden. Just look at the cute cupcake decal in the window!
Whenever I hear people talking about cupcakes in London, which seems to be cupcake central for the UK, the name Primrose Bakery always comes up. So, when Dave invited me along to see Star Wars: A Musical Journey—wonderful, wonderful music, even for a non-fan like me—I managed to sweeten the deal by insisting on visiting Primrose Bakery.
The Primrose Bakery story is a simple and familiar one… two mums, Martha Swift and Lisa Thomas, started out baking cupcakes for their childrens birthday parties and then in 2004 began supplying them to their local deli, Melrose and Morgan. Things snowballed, as they are wont to do, and they set up shop in Primrose Hill and began supplying to Selfridges food hall, Fortnum and Mason, Tom’s Deli, Fresh & Wild, and Liberty. A second shop in Covent Garden opened a couple of years later.
The bakery is utterly charming. From the cupcake decal on the window to the ceramic cake stands displaying pastel-iced cupcakes and the retro sugar dispensers on the cafe tables, everything is cupcake-cute. I really appreciated that there were tables—tea and coffee, also available—as the atmosphere in the shop is so sweet that I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to linger. Of course, you can also have your cupcakes wrapped up to take away…
As we visited over Easter, there were plenty of Easter-themed cupcakes on display. After dithering over the stands and display case for a few minutes, I decided on a rose cupcake for myself and a mocha cupcake for Dave and settled down at one of the little retro tables.
My rose cupcake was a vanilla butter cake topped off with a rosewater (and oddly, vanilla, too) buttercream and some crystallised rose petals. I would have preferred the buttercream to have been flavoured with just rosewater, but I suspect they were playing it safe. The butter cake itself was delicious, moist and tender—I would happily go back for another if the buttercream was more assertively flavoured with rosewater.
Dave chose a mocha cupcake: chocolate sponge cake topped with coffee buttercream and some chocolate-coated coffee beans. He liked the flavour but found the cake to be too dry for his tastes. Alas, I completely forgot to snaffle a taste of his cupcake so I can’t give you my opinion!
To me, the Primrose Bakery cupcakes felt like a half-way house between American cupcakes and British fairy cakes. They were cupcake sized, but the amount of icing was more akin to what you’d get on a fairy cake, albeit buttercream and not glacé. I know that Marks and Spencer have deliberately gone for a small amount of icing on top of their new cupcake range to ’suit British tastes’ , so perhaps the ladies of Primrose Bakery came to the same conclusion years earlier? Personally I don’t know anyone who objects to an extravagant swirl of buttercream on a cupcake—the general rule seems to be, ‘the more the better’!
Overall, I’m glad I made the pilgrimage to Primrose Bakery. I wouldn’t rush back, but if I was passing and felt the need for cake—and when do I not feel the need for cake?—I’d pop in.
Primrose Bakery
Primrose Hill: 69 Gloucester Avenue, London NW1 8LD
Tel: 020 7483 4222
Covent Garden: 42 Tavistock Street, London WC2E 7PB
Tel: 020 7836 3638
Email: primrose-bakery@btconnect.com
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mmm this looks right up my street. I do love cupcakes (when they are not dry or stale tasting!) I always feel a bit let down by them – maybe because they promise so much with their prettiness? I have found some good ones at Angel Food Bakery, albeit in Brighton: http://twurl.nl/muedfq
I firmly believe that cupcakes have to taste as good as they look, if not better! I’ve seen Angel Food Bakery (great name) online but haven’t been to Brighton in ages, so haven’t tasted them. Nice to know that they’re good, though!
Very cute shop indeed but what a pity the cupcakes weren’t quite as swoonworthy as they look. I find my cupcakes take ages until they become dry so it makes me wonder how far ahead they are baked. They do look lovely though! The frosting swirl reminds me of the Crabapple Cupcake bakery’s signature swirl.
Totally. Dave did ponder whether this was how cupcakes were supposed to be, but I’m pretty damn sure that they should be moist, luscious little cakes rather than having a hint of dryness or crumbliness to them. I’m really glad I went because it’s always an ego-boost to discover that your cakes are better than the pros
Okay, I need to stop drooling and being jealous and fly my butt to london.
even the name of the shop sounds heavenly and magical!
It seems to be the case over and over that these little cupcake boutiques don’t quite deliver the quality we can make at home – the place looks great though and it still sounds like you had fun
Yes, without blowing my own trumpet too much, the Primrose cupcakes were far short of the ones I make at home. It could be down to baking in big batches or it might just be that they were a couple of days old. (Although, my cupcakes stay moist for at least three days…)
We did have fun, though, and I certainly won’t sneeze at eating cupcakes for breakfast
I think I will have to put Primrose on my ‘to visit’ list when I’m in London this fall.
There are tons of cupcakeries in London; we also stopped by Candy cakes but it was close to our lunch reservation and it seemed like we had the world’s slowest customers ahead of us. They did look nice, but very, very different to Primrose Bakery. (Lurid shiny fondant covered cakes, but I did like how they reminded me of Smurf houses
)
Hi i was just there this week and your right it really is a lovely little cup cake cafe, inspired me to perfect my own cup cakes.
It really was a lovely place, even on the very rainy day that we visited
This looks like such a perfect bakery!
I’m glad I found your blog – I totally love your design and can’t wait to read through more of your archives!
Thanks, Maris! I hope you enjoy wading through the archives!
oh wow.. this place looks fabulous! I wish we had bakeries like that in Ireland! And if I had my way I’d be running one! I’m just so fussy about my baked goods that I find it really hard to find a satisfying cupcake here (that I didn’t bake myself!)
On a recent visit to London for business I sent my husband to pick up and bring me home some of these “famous” cupcakes and was sooooo disappointed! We had vanilla which was dry as a bone, rose, which was bland, lime and coconut which tasted nothing like either of those flavours and chocolate, which was dry as a bone and pretty tasteless!! Sooo disappointing. Also Candy Cakes are a complete con as far as I’m concerned. They’re bought in muffins covered in psychadelic fondant which is rife with nasty food colourings. Let’s be clear, these are not cupcakes!!!
I recently visited the primrose bakery on tavistock st, with my boyfriend. We bought a lemon cupcake, a cookies and cream one and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.
The cookies and cream cupcake, had a plain choc base, which wasn’t particularly exciting.
The topping was a kind of meringue-ish topping, (it was shiny, with smooth and silky texture,) with crumbled oreo cookies. There certainly wasn’t enough topping for the amount of sponge, and wasn’t as tasty as we thought it would be.
The lemon cupcake, was basically lemony frosting on a plain base. I love lemony lemon cakes, and as really disappointed that there wasn’t more flavour. I expected a lemon sponge, or perhaps abit of lemon curd for extra taste.
However, the lemon drizzle cake was scrumptious, packed with lemony flavour. Lots of lemony sugar on top, abit much in one mouthful, but it meant you could have a little with each mouthful.
I would go back for the drizzle cake, and maybe if I fancied crumpets and tea for breakfast.