Light and Fruity Cakes for Celebrations

There is a particular sight that tells you a cake was the wrong choice. Everybody takes a slice, everybody says how good it looks, and half the plates go back to the kitchen with two thirds still on them.

It is almost never because the cake was bad. It is because it was too much for the moment. A dense layer cake at the end of a long dinner, or in a warm room in July, or after a buffet, is a good cake in the wrong place.

These are what to order instead.

Pavlova

The lightest thing we make and the best answer to a heavy meal.

A meringue shell that is crisp on the outside and still soft as marshmallow in the middle, which requires a low oven and a slow bake and cannot be rushed. Lightly whipped cream over it, fresh berries on top.

Most of its volume is air, so a proper slice sits almost weightlessly after three courses. The berries do the rest, because acidity is what a palate wants at the end of a rich meal and sweetness is not.

It contains no flour, which means it also quietly solves a gluten problem for the whole table without anybody having to be handed a separate plate.

The one thing to know is that it does not wait. Cream against meringue starts softening it immediately, so it is assembled as late as we can and it is at its best within a few hours of arriving. This is a cake to serve on the day, not to keep. £72.

Meringue Roll£66Kyiv Cake (18 cm)£84

Strawberry and cream cake

Light vanilla sponge, whipped cream that has not been stiffened into something it should not be, and sliced strawberries through every layer and over the top. No jam, no glaze, nothing else.

It is the simplest cake we make and the one that most often surprises people, because it tastes of fruit and cream rather than of sugar. Children eat it without negotiation, which is not true of most of our range.

We only make it while strawberries are worth eating. Out of season the fruit is pale and watery, and a £65 cake built on bad strawberries is not something we want to send out, so it comes off the site rather than being made with whatever is in the shops. If it is listed, the fruit is good.

Best on the day it arrives and still good the next. £65.

Meringue roll

Baked flat, filled with fresh cream and berries while it still has some give, then rolled before it sets hard. Roll it too late and it cracks the whole way along, so the timing is narrow and done by feel.

Crisp on the outside, soft within, and much lighter than it looks. It is a good middle option when a pavlova feels too fragile for the occasion but a layer cake would be too much.

At £45 it is among the least expensive things we make, and it cuts into generous slices, which makes it useful on a dessert table where it has to sit alongside other things.

Lemon meringue tart

Not light in the way a pavlova is, but sharp, which does a similar job.

The curd is made deliberately sour. Lemon meringue is often sweet the whole way through, and once meringue is piped on top there is nothing left to balance it. Ours is sharp enough that the meringue reads as a contrast rather than as more of the same.

Sweet pastry baked blind so the base stays crisp, lemon curd, meringue torched so the peaks catch and the inside stays soft.

This is the dessert for after a heavy dinner where somebody has asked for something not too sweet and means it. 18 cm, cuts into eight or ten, £40. Best on the day, as meringue starts to weep after about twenty four hours.

The same curd and meringue comes as six individual tartlets at £30, which is the better choice when you would rather not be dealing with a serving knife.

Strawberry tart

Sweet pastry, a layer of cream, strawberries arranged over the top. Like the strawberry cake, it is made only while the fruit is genuinely good.

It looks like far more work than a cake and it is lighter, which makes it right for a summer lunch or a garden party on a hot day when nobody wants buttercream. Serve it cold, cut into eight. £51.

Gluten free peach pie

Worth including here because it is the lightest of our pies by some distance.

Made without gluten, without added sugar and without lactose, with the sweetness coming from the peaches alone. That means it tastes noticeably less sweet than a standard pie, and it also means the fruit has nowhere to hide, so we only make it when the peaches are good.

It exists because we were asked for it often enough by people who had spent a long time being handed a bowl of fruit while everybody else had pudding. 20 cm, serves eight to ten, £46.

Choosing by occasion

After a long dinner, the pavlova or the lemon tart. Nothing else comes close.

A summer garden party, the strawberry cake or the strawberry tart while they are in season.

A buffet or a dessert table, the meringue roll, because it holds its shape when it is cut and sits well beside other things.

A hot day indoors, anything on this list except the pies. Buttercream in a warm room is unpleasant for everybody.

A lunch rather than a dinner, the strawberry cake. People have more appetite at one o'clock than they do at ten.

The practical caveat

Almost everything on this list is short lived, and that is the trade for the lightness.

The pavlova is a few hours. The strawberry cake and tart are a day, two at a push. The lemon tart is a day. The meringue roll is a day or two.

If you need something that holds for three days, none of these are right and you want a Napoleon or a Prague instead. If you need something that can sit out on a table for a warm afternoon, none of these are right either.

They are desserts for a moment rather than for a week, and if you plan around that they are the best things we make.

Ordering

All of these need 48 hours notice. Order for the day of the event rather than several days ahead, which is the opposite of what we say about most of the range.

Delivery is £12 within SW3 and £15 across the rest of London and Surrey. There is a £50 minimum on orders.

Seasonal items disappear from the site when the fruit stops being good. If the strawberry cake is not showing, that is why, and it will be back.