I’m doing pretty well for cake this week. The Hummingbird bakery held a re-opening of their re-furbished Kensington store. “Do you want to eat cake, drink champagne and take photos?” they said. “Yes” we said, and so we went to eat cake, drink champagne and take photos. Everyone was very polite whilst we commandeered the cake table and proceeded to be undignified.

The bakery is nice, small and cute. There are three of them in London, and it is genuinely one of those rare places where the cake looks very cute and also tastes nice (more technically described as ‘Light and moist’) which is good because there are a lot of places that sell cute cake that tastes terrible. If I was going to buy cake, which I rarely do (n.b. they do a recipe book), I would buy it from here. The red velvet is a stand-out.

I loved the steamy window with the lights diffused from outside. It made standing inside feel warm (which it was, and so we threw off multiple layers) and cosy, like a secret little party.

So, here are some photos of cake. Bear with it.

Look, here I am holding two cakes at once. “But I want to eat it” I said, as Nicola took the third attempt at a photo. “It is dribbling all over my hand. Here, let me eat it and grab another. That would be most practical.” And so the night continued.

Oh look, it’s me adeptly multitasking holding a cake, two champagne glasses and a pair of glasses that spend their time trying to fall down my face. You can see the re-done kitsch tiling in the background. It is pretty nice as far as tiling goes. I am apparently unable to see a bird these days without going “oh look, the twitter bird, on a wall!” Not cool.

And a goodybox, which had a big cake in it. Om nom nom.
A lovely place, go.

This is lovely. Jonathan, whose blog I can usually be heard trumpeting on about, has launched into some almighty some song project. He plans to make a song a week. One of his songish tasks involved making a video for his song featuring birds and he gathered pictures of hand-drawn birds from lots of people. In true me-fashion I got very excited and demandedpeople make bird pictures for Jonathan, and then forgot to draw one myself.

I like the result much more than I thought I might. I like the mix of drawings, and I like the way they flash up in front of me. There are different birds and styles and colours, and there is a Robin, and even a duck. Everytime I want to stop it and cry “I like that one most!” there’s another one flashing up that I fickly want to point at too. Song ain’t bad either. (it’s rather good)

For Christmas I was given a calendar which, despite the fact that it is made of paper and requires the use of a pen instead of a computer device, I like very much. This is principally because it has a big cupcake for every month. “I will make my own version every month” and I did, for this month at least. The plan is to keep it up. And it is cake, so I see no reason not to.

So, above is the ideal, the holy grail of polar bear cake. Below are our efforts, which I’m sure you will agree are at least ten times as good. See: a little guide to how to to make them to make your own. Show me your efforts please.

I love this one.  He looks like he is french and enjoys reading.

I secretly think Regent’s Street is a bit over-rated, but one of my favourite shops is Anthropologie. Inside, amongst lots of clothes I can barely afford (which in no way inhibits my ability to take 80% of the store into the changing room with me) is an awesome shop design. Whilst they don’t do anything massive and outstanding, it’s filled with enough small quirky odd bits that it’s like entering a lovely new world of Anthropologie personality. I may just like it because there are stacks of books everywhere and it does a good job of trying to morph itself some sort of shabby chic habitat. It’s not quite my dream home like I suspect it’s trying to tell me it as, but with lots of things to look at beyond clothes it’s definitely more unique than other shops.

I already have a thing about things groups of lots of hanging things (following some spottings at Clerkenwell Design Show last year), but the other day this was lovely. More sexy shops plz.