· 6 min read
Dessert Gift Ideas for Delivery
Sending food is a good gift and an easy one to get wrong. Most of the mistakes come from not picturing what happens after the box is opened.
Food is one of the better things to send. It gets used, it does not sit in a cupboard, and it arrives at a specific moment rather than becoming another object in somebody's house.
It is also easy to get wrong, and almost every mistake comes from the same place: not thinking past the moment the box is opened.
Start with the household, not the gift
Before choosing anything, picture the kitchen it is going to.
Is anybody in? A cake cannot be left on a doorstep in July. If the recipient works from an office, sending to their home is a guess. Send us their mobile number and the delivery gets arranged with them rather than hoped at.
How many people live there? An 18 cm cake is ten to twelve slices. Sent to one person, that is a slightly overwhelming gift and most of it will be thrown away, which they will feel guilty about. Sent to a family of five it is right.
Is there room in the fridge? A boxed cake takes more space than people expect. For a household that already has a full fridge, biscuits and truffles are a kinder gift than a cake.
Do they cook? If they do, pirozhki and bread land better than cake. If they do not, a cake needs nothing from them at all, which is the point.
What travels and what does not
Best for sending: truffles at £48, Florentines at £23, kurabye at £15, goose feet at £25, peanut rings at £36, oat cookies at £20. All of these keep for a week or more, need no fridge, and can sit on a counter being available.
Good for sending: the Napoleon at £85, the Prague at £75, the carrot cake at £65, the medovik at £68. All hold three days in a fridge and several improve on day two.
Send only if you know somebody is in and will eat it soon: pavlova, strawberry cake, choux, trubochki, vatrushki, anything with fresh cream. These are wonderful and they have a working life measured in hours.
Do not send: bread, unless you know they want it. Bread arriving unasked is a small obligation rather than a treat.
How much to spend
The instinct is that more expensive means more thoughtful, and it is usually the opposite.
A £98 Cipriani sent to a household of two is not a generous gift, it is a problem they have to eat their way through. A £24 box of kartoshka sent to somebody who mentioned once that they missed them is a much better gift, and they will remember it longer.
The right amount is whatever matches the relationship. Our £50 minimum sets a floor, and a £50 to £70 order covers almost every ordinary occasion. Above that you are into cakes for events rather than gifts for people.
The occasions
New baby. Send savoury and send things that keep. Pirozhki across two fillings, at £22 to £27 for six, freeze well and reheat in twenty minutes, which is exactly what a household with a newborn needs. Nobody in that house wants to be cutting a cake. Add oat cookies at £20 for one handed eating at three in the morning.
Somebody unwell, or a household under strain. The same logic. Savoury, portioned, freezable, requiring nothing.
A thank you. The medovik at £68 if you want it to be a moment, or truffles at £48 if you want it to be graceful and small.
Homesickness. This is the one we send most and the one that matters most. If they are Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or Baltic, do not send a cake. Send oreshki at £40, sochniki at £25, kartoshka at £24, trubochki at £31. These are things they cannot buy here, and they carry far more weight than any cake. If you know which one their family made, send that one.
Christmas or a big date. Something that keeps and something shareable. Florentines and truffles together, or a Napoleon that will still be good on the twenty seventh.
An apology. Small and good. Choux at £16 or truffles at £48. Extravagance in an apology reads as buying your way out of it.
The mistakes people make
Sending nothing with it. The message field at checkout is the most underused thing on the site. A cake with no words attached is a nice object. A cake with two sentences on it is a gesture, and the sentences do not need to be good. Six words is plenty. Write it before you reach the checkout, because people leave it blank when they have to think of something on the spot.
Not saying who it is from. More gift deliveries arrive anonymously than you would believe, and the recipient spends the afternoon working it out rather than enjoying it.
Sending a celebration cake to a bereaved household. Well meant and it lands wrongly. Send food that helps, not food that celebrates.
Sending too much. A gift that has to be eaten within two days, in quantity, by people who did not plan for it, is a task.
Leaving it too late. We need 48 hours, and 72 for bread. There is no same day option and no next day option, so a gift dessert takes a small amount of planning.
Sending to an office
Worth its own note, because it is where most gift deliveries go wrong.
Buildings with a security desk will not accept a box addressed to a company alone, and a courier who cannot get past reception will not stand there working it out. Put the recipient's full name and their mobile number in at checkout, and if the building has a goods entrance or a specific floor, put that in too.
Time it for the middle of the morning rather than first thing. A gift arriving at half past eight sits at a desk unopened until the person gets in, and if it has cream in it that is already a problem.
And consider whether the person actually wants a delivery at work. A cake at a desk becomes a communal cake within four minutes, which is fine for a team celebration and is not always what the sender intended.
Ordering
Everything goes through the website. Choose the items, choose a delivery date at least two days out, put the recipient's address in at checkout, and use the message field.
Delivery is £12 within SW3 and £15 across the rest of London and Surrey, which covers all London postcodes and much of Surrey, Kent and the Home Counties. There is a £50 minimum order.
If you are sending something and you are not sure what would suit, send us a message describing the person and the occasion. We will tell you what we would send, and reasonably often it is cheaper than what you were considering.
Order it for the date you need
Everything here is baked to order for your date.
48 hours notice, 72 for bread. Delivered across London and Surrey.