The Vanilla Meringue Cake, and Why It Costs What It Does

The vanilla meringue cake is the most expensive thing we make, and people ask why. It is a fair question and it deserves a direct answer rather than a paragraph about passion.

The answer is hours. Not rare ingredients, not imported anything, not a mystery. The cake takes a great deal longer to make than any other cake on the list, and almost none of that time can be compressed.

What it is

A cake built in fine layers in the Italian style: delicate sponge, meringue, and a silky cream that is neither buttercream nor whipped cream but something made with both and behaving like neither.

The Cipriani name attaches to it because that family of Venetian cakes is where the technique comes from, and because that is what customers who know it ask for. The character is restraint. No dominant flavour, no chocolate, no fruit competing for attention, nothing sharp cutting through. It is vanilla, dairy, egg and air, assembled so finely that the individual layers stop being distinguishable in the mouth.

That is an unfashionable thing for a cake to be. Most of what sells now is loud. This one is the opposite, and the people who order it order it repeatedly.

Where the hours go

Four places, roughly.

The sponge is thin and has to be baked in several separate pieces rather than baked once and split. A split sponge has a torn face and this cake shows everything.

The meringue is dried slowly, and the drying cannot be hurried with more heat without colouring it, and colour would be visible through the cream.

The cream is a cooked preparation that has to come to the right temperature, cool to the right temperature, and be beaten at the right temperature. Each of those is a wait with nothing else happening, and getting it wrong at any stage means starting the cream again rather than adjusting it.

And the assembly is slow because the layers are thin and there are many of them, and because a layer set down crooked cannot be lifted and repositioned. Every one has to go down right the first time.

Vanilla Meringue CakeVanilla meringue cake in the Italian style, 18 cm. Delicate sponge, meringue and silky cream.£102Order this

Why we do not make a cheaper version

We could. Fewer, thicker layers, a simpler cream, a sponge baked once and split. It would cost considerably less and it would be a perfectly nice vanilla cake.

It would also stop being this cake. The whole effect depends on the layers being fine enough that they read as one continuous texture, and the moment they are thick enough to notice individually you are eating a normal layer cake with meringue in it, which is a thing you can buy anywhere.

So the choice is to make it properly or not to offer it, and the price is what making it properly costs.

When it is worth ordering

For an occasion where the cake is part of the point rather than the thing at the end.

An anniversary dinner. A significant birthday where the table is small and the cake will actually be looked at. An engagement. The kind of evening where somebody will ask what it is.

It is not the cake for a children's party, it is not the cake for a large buffet where slices get carried around on paper plates, and it is not the cake to order because it is the most expensive one and therefore presumably the best. For a big table that wants to be impressed, the Kyiv cake and the honey cake do more work per pound.

Kyiv Cake (18 cm)£84Esterházy Cake£76

Serving it

Cold from the fridge, out for twenty minutes, no more. The cream is delicate and a warm room does it no favours at all.

Cut it with a thin sharp knife, wiped between every slice. This is the one cake on our list where a clean cut visibly changes how it looks on the plate, because the layers are the decoration.

Nothing beside it. No sauce, no berries, no cream. It is finished.

What else costs this much, and what you get

It is a fair exercise to compare, so here is the honest version.

A large supermarket celebration cake costs a fraction of this and feeds the same number of people. It is made on a line, it has a shelf life measured in days, and for a children's party it is the correct purchase and we would say so.

A cake from a London patisserie of the kind that has a window on a good street costs something similar to this, sometimes more. What you are paying for there is largely the same thing: hours of skilled labour, in a city where that is expensive.

A wedding cake, per portion, costs considerably more than this again, and the extra is partly design work and partly the fact that failure is not an option on the day.

Where this one sits is at the top of what a small kitchen can make for a table of ten to twelve without the cake becoming a project. It is not a bargain and it is not meant to be. It is the most work we can put into an 18 cm cake, priced at what that work costs.

Common questions

What does it taste like?

Vanilla, cream and meringue, gently. It is deliberately restrained rather than rich, and it is the least sweet celebration cake we make.

Is it gluten free?

No. There is sponge in it, which contains wheat. Esterházy is the gluten free cake on our list.

Does it contain nuts?

No. It contains gluten, eggs and milk.

How many people does it serve?

The 18 cm cake gives ten to twelve slices. Because it is light, people will take a second, so for a table of twelve who are being served only this, count it as ten.

How far ahead should I order it?

Forty eight hours is the minimum, and for this one in particular more notice is genuinely helpful. If you are planning a date some weeks out, order it then rather than two days before.

Can it carry a piped message?

It can, though we would gently suggest not. The top of this cake is the finish, and writing on it changes what it is. Candles and a card are the better route, and both are available at checkout.

Is there a larger version?

Not as a standard size. For a big event, talk to us in Belgravia rather than ordering through the site, and we will tell you honestly whether this is the right cake to scale.

Ordering one in London

Made to order in Belgravia, delivered across London and Surrey. £12 delivery in central London, £15 elsewhere, £50 minimum order.