Blueberry Buns Delivered Across London and Surrey

Most of the questions we get about the Blueberry Streusel Buns are not about the recipe. They are about logistics. Someone wants four buns for a Saturday breakfast in Fulham, or a box to take to a birthday in Weybridge, and they want to know how late they can order and when the box will turn up. This article answers that. The buns themselves are £36 for four, soft enriched dough with a blueberry filling under a buttery streusel crust, and if the word jagodzianki is what brought you here, the full explanation of the Polish bun, the forest bilberry and the kruszonka topping lives in a separate article. Ours are made with cultivated blueberries, which are larger, sweeter and milder than the wild bilberry a Polish jagodzianka is built on, and we would rather say that plainly than borrow a name we have not earned.

Twenty four hours for buns, forty eight for cakes

Nothing here is baked in advance. There is no chiller with yesterday's stock in it waiting for an order, because the kitchen is small and everything is made by hand for the date on the order. That is the reason for the notice periods, and they are not the same for every item.

Buns and most pastries need 24 hours. Order the blueberry buns on Tuesday morning and Wednesday is available. The dough is enriched with eggs, milk, sugar and butter, and enriched dough is slow: it proves more slowly than lean bread dough, it wants to be shaped cold, and the streusel goes on at the last moment so it stays crisp rather than dissolving into the crumb. Twenty four hours is the shortest honest window for that work.

Cakes need 48. A honey cake is layered and then rested overnight so the sour cream frosting softens the honey layers. A Napoleon is assembled and left so the puff pastry gives slightly against the custard. A Basque cheesecake needs to cool fully before it can be moved without cracking. Rushing any of those produces a worse cake, so we do not offer it.

The practical consequence is that a mixed order runs on the longer clock. If you want four blueberry buns and an 18 cm Signature Carrot Cake delivered together, the whole order needs 48 hours, because the cake does. If the buns matter more than arriving together, say so and we will talk about it. Bread is different again: sourdough, rye and the Japanese milk loaf need 72 hours, and they are baked on one day a week.

Blueberry Streusel Buns (Jagodzianki)Jagodzianki, Polish blueberry buns, four to a box. Soft enriched dough, blueberry filling, buttery streusel.£42Order this

Where we deliver, named

Delivery covers London and Surrey. The full map and the charges are on the delivery page, which is kept current, and there is no point in me printing numbers here that might drift out of date. What that page will not tell you is how the day actually runs, so here is that part.

Central and inner London is straightforward. The kitchen is in Belgravia, so Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Pimlico, Mayfair, Marylebone, Kensington and Westminster are short runs, and orders in those postcodes have the widest choice of slots. Further out, across the river and into the western and northern suburbs, the run is longer and the window is wider. Surrey is a separate thing again, and it is worth understanding how it works, because it is not simply London with more driving.

The weekly bread round goes out on Wednesday. Sourdough, rye and Japanese milk bread are baked that morning and delivered the same afternoon to Virginia Water, Weybridge, Ascot, Sunningdale, Sunninghill, Egham and Englefield Green. Those seven places have a fixed day and a fixed afternoon. If you live in one of them, Wednesday is the easiest day of the week to receive anything from us, bread or otherwise, and it is worth building an order around it. Four blueberry buns and a sourdough loaf arriving together on a Wednesday afternoon is the single most efficient order anyone in Virginia Water or Sunningdale can place.

Bakery delivery in Surrey outside that round is arranged case by case. Tell us the address and the date and we will tell you honestly whether it works.

How the box travels and when it arrives

The buns go out in a box of four, baked that day. Enriched dough is at its best within hours of baking, and the streusel is at its crispest before the fruit has had time to steam it from underneath. This is the reason we do not post pastries: a box in a courier network for two days arrives as a different product.

Delivery times are agreed when the order is confirmed rather than picked from a menu, because the route changes every day depending on where the other orders are going. When you order, tell us the window that suits you and the address, and we will either confirm it or offer the nearest thing we can do. If nobody will be in, say that too. Buns will survive an hour on a doorstep in February and will not enjoy an afternoon in July sun, and it is easier to plan around that than to fix it afterwards.

When the box arrives, the buns are ready to eat. If they are for the following morning, keep them in the box at room temperature rather than in the fridge, which dries enriched dough faster than anything else in the kitchen. Three or four minutes in a low oven brings back the streusel.

One thing that catches people out: the kitchen is not a walk in counter. There is no window in Belgravia to collect from on impulse. We work Monday to Saturday by appointment, and everything is either delivered or collected at an agreed time.

Poppy Seed Buns - 4 Pieces£30Cinnamon Rolls - 6 Pieces£48

If you are outside the area

Sometimes the answer is no. If the address is far outside London and Surrey, or the date is tomorrow and the order is a cake, we will say so rather than take the money and disappoint someone.

There are usually two things worth trying. The first is a different address. Plenty of orders are delivered to an office in central London and carried home by the person who ordered them, which works well for buns and pirozhki and less well for an assembled cake that does not like being tilted. The second is a different date. Moving a Surrey delivery to a Wednesday, or a London one by a day, often turns an impossible order into an easy one.

If the buns are the point, the rest of the collection is worth a look before you commit, because there are things that travel just as well and suit a different table: poppy seed buns at £30 for four, six cinnamon rolls at £48, strawberry vatrushki at £32. For anything specific, email info@mikebakes.uk or call +44 7922 122149 with the postcode and the date, and the answer usually takes one message. Order blueberry buns by this time tomorrow and they can be on a table the morning after.