How to Choose a Birthday Cake

Most people choose a birthday cake by scrolling until something looks nice. It works often enough, and it also produces the two classic outcomes: a cake that runs out after fifteen people, or three quarters of a cake still sitting in the fridge four days later.

There is a better order to do this in, and the picture comes last.

Start with the number, then halve your instinct

Ask how many people will actually eat cake, which is not the same as how many are invited.

At a party with food, drink and a table of other things, roughly two thirds of guests take a slice. At a sit down dinner where cake is the dessert, nearly everyone does. At an office, the ratio depends entirely on whether it is near the kettle.

An 18 cm cake, which is what all our cakes are, gives ten to twelve dessert slices. Cut smaller for a party where people are standing and eating with their fingers, and the same cake stretches to sixteen. Rich cakes stretch further than light ones because people take less. A Napoleon or a Kyiv will genuinely feed more people than a strawberry and cream cake of identical size.

If the number is above twenty five, you are past what one 18 cm cake can honestly do, and the answer is either a large format cake or two different cakes. Two is often better. It gives people a choice, it looks more generous on the table, and it solves the dietary problem at the same time.

Then ask when it gets cut

This matters more than people expect.

If the cake comes out at the end of a long meal, choose something light. Pavlova, the strawberry and cream cake, or the meringue roll. A dense buttercream cake after three courses gets admired and left.

If it is the main event at an afternoon party with tea, go the other way. Medovik, Prague, Kyiv and Napoleon are all at their best when there is nothing competing with them and people have room.

If it is being carried out with candles as the moment of the evening, think about how it looks in low light. The Bird's Milk, with its dark chocolate shell, and the Prague, with its glaze, both photograph well and catch candlelight. A crumb coated medovik is a beautiful thing to eat and a slightly dull thing to photograph.

Then the dietary question, before the flavour

Ask now rather than the day before. It changes the shortlist rather than adding a footnote to it.

If someone cannot eat gluten, the Esterházy is the answer. It is gluten free because it never contained flour, not because anything was swapped out, and nobody at the table identifies it as a free from cake unless you say so. The pavlova is also flour free. Both mean you order one cake for everyone rather than a cake and an apologetic side plate.

If someone cannot eat nuts, avoid the Kyiv, the Esterházy, the carrot cake and the Bear in the North. That still leaves the medovik, Napoleon, Prague, Bird's Milk, Charodeyka, Basque cheesecake and pavlova.

If dairy is the problem, we cannot help with a cake and would rather say so than sell you something you have to apologise for.

Now the flavour, by who is eating

For a room of adults with mixed tastes, medovik. It is the most reliably liked thing we make, it is unusual enough to be interesting, and it is not too sweet.

For someone who genuinely wants chocolate, Prague. Layers of cocoa sponge soaked in syrup, apricot jam under a chocolate glaze, and the jam is what stops it being too much.

For a summer birthday, the strawberry and cream cake while the fruit is in season, or the pavlova.

For children, the Charodeyka. Sponge, custard cream, chocolate glaze, nothing to explain and nothing anyone has to be persuaded into. It is also £50, which is the cheapest of our cakes, and children are not paying attention to provenance.

For a significant birthday where the cake is the point, the Cipriani. Vanilla sponge and a very light cream, no chocolate and no fruit, and every layer visible. It is £98 and it is the cake we are proudest of.

For someone from Russia, Ukraine or anywhere the Soviet Union reached, ask which cake their family made. If the answer is Bird's Milk or Kyiv, order that one and nothing else. Getting this right lands differently from getting it merely correct.

Practical things people forget

Order the candles with the cake. We do numeral candles and a piped message, and both have to be added at checkout rather than remembered on the day.

Give yourself a buffer on the date. We need 48 hours, but choosing delivery for the morning of the party is a risk you do not need to take. The day before is better. Every cake we make is fine after a night in the fridge and several are improved by it.

Check the fridge fits it. An 18 cm cake in a box needs more room than people assume, and rearranging a full fridge while guests arrive is a bad start to an evening.

Take it out twenty minutes before cutting. Cold flattens flavour, particularly in anything with buttercream.

The cake nobody remembers ordering

One more thing worth saying. The cake people talk about afterwards is almost never the most expensive one on the table. It is the one that suited the room.

A £98 Cipriani at a casual afternoon party is a waste of a good cake, because nobody is paying it the attention it wants. A £50 Charodeyka at a children's birthday is exactly right, and it will be eaten to the board. Spending more does not make the choice better, and several of our best received orders have been the cheapest thing we make.

Ordering

Everything is on the website. Choose the cake, choose a date at least two days out, add extras, and pay. Delivery is £12 within SW3 and £15 across the rest of London and Surrey, and there is a £50 minimum on orders.

For anything above about twenty five people, or for a cake that has to look a particular way, send us a message instead of using the checkout. That is a conversation rather than a form, and it is much easier to have it three weeks ahead than three days.