How to Order a Cake Online

Ordering a cake from us takes about four minutes. The mechanics are not complicated and this is not really a guide to using a website.

What is worth setting out is the small number of rules behind the checkout, because they are the things that catch people out and they all have reasons.

Choosing a date

You choose the delivery date, not us, and this is the most important field on the page.

The calendar will not let you pick a date less than 48 hours away for cakes and pastries, or less than 72 hours away for bread. That is not a buffer we have added for comfort. Several things genuinely need the time.

A medovik is assembled the day before and rests overnight, and the resting is the last stage of making it rather than a delay after it is finished. A Napoleon is the same. A Kyiv needs its buttercream to work into the meringue.

Bread is also restricted to Wednesdays, because that is the only day we bake it. If you select bread, the calendar will only offer Wednesdays that are at least 72 hours out.

Order for the day before your event, not the day of it. This is the single most useful piece of advice on this page. Almost everything we make is fine after a night in the fridge and several things are better for it. Waiting for a van on the morning of a party is a stress you do not need.

The exceptions are choux, the pavlova and anything with fresh cream, which should be ordered for the day.

The £50 minimum

Orders below £50 are not accepted, which occasionally frustrates somebody who wanted a single box of biscuits.

The reason is that below that figure the cost of getting a box across London exceeds the margin on what is in it. We could hide that by putting every price up a little and letting the larger orders cover the small ones, which is what a lot of places do. We would rather set an honest floor.

In practice most orders clear it without trying. If yours does not, the kurabye at £15, the oat cookies at £20 or the chocolate selection at £15 are the cheapest ways to get there, and all three keep for a week.

Delivery

£12 within SW3, which is Chelsea. £15 everywhere else we cover.

Everywhere else is a large area. All London postcodes, so every E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W and WC. Then a good deal beyond: KT for Kingston, Surbiton and Esher, GU for Guildford and Woking, BR for Bromley, CR for Croydon, DA for Dartford and Bexley, EN for Enfield and Barnet, HA for Harrow and Wembley, IG for Ilford, RG for Reading and Bracknell, TW for Twickenham and Richmond, UB for Uxbridge, SM for Sutton, SL for Slough and Windsor, and WD for Watford.

Put your postcode in at checkout and it will tell you immediately. If we do not deliver to you, the checkout will say so rather than taking your money and working it out later.

Extras

Candles and a piped message are added at checkout rather than requested afterwards, and this is where people slip up most often.

Numeral candles need the number. A piped message needs the wording, and there is a character limit because there is only so much surface on an 18 cm cake. Keep it to a few words. Long messages have to be piped small and small piping is harder to read across a room.

Not every cake takes a message. Some of ours have a surface that can be piped on and some do not, so the option only appears where it works. A crumb coated medovik cannot carry piping and a glazed Prague can.

What we need from you

A mobile number that will be answered on the day. This is the difference between a delivery that happens and one that does not.

An address that a person can get into. Flats with entry systems, buildings with concierges, offices with security desks. If there is anything unusual, put it in the notes.

Somebody there. These are not doorstep items in warm weather.

If you are sending the order to somebody else as a gift, give us their mobile number rather than yours, so the delivery can be arranged with the person who will actually be in.

Changing or cancelling

Message us as early as you can.

Before we have started baking, changes are usually straightforward. Once a cake is made, it exists, it was made for you, and it cannot go to anybody else. That is the trade for baking to order rather than off a shelf.

The practical line is roughly 48 hours before delivery. Inside that window we will do what we can and cannot always do much.

Date changes are easier than cancellations, and moving an order forward is easier than moving it back.

If something goes wrong

Tell us, with a photograph, on the day.

Cakes travel and vans stop suddenly, and occasionally something arrives having shifted in its box. We would far rather know than have you decide privately that we are not very good. Almost everything is fixable if we hear about it while the day is still going.

Photographs matter because we cannot see it, and because it tells us whether the problem was the packing, the driver or the making, which are three different things we fix in three different ways.

Napoleon Cake (18cm)£86Sold outBear in the North Cake£68

Ordering for something large

If you are ordering for more than about twenty five people, for a wedding, or for anything that has to look a particular way, do not use the checkout.

Send us a message with the date, the numbers and where it is going, and we will work it out with you. Large cakes are not simply bigger versions of the ones on the site, portioning for a crowd is a different calculation, and there are usually questions about setup that a form cannot ask.

That conversation is much easier three weeks ahead than three days.