Archive note, September 2026: This case study was originally published in 2016 and records one particularly extravagant birthday order. The Unicorn Croquembouche Cake and our Croquembouche collection are still live; the bakery-weekend story and timings below belong to that original order.
Oh Em Gee...in a weekend where we saw a bevy of tiered birthday cakes leave the bakery we also squeezed in a totally last minute Large Horn of the Unicorn Birthday Croquembouche Cake! And dude, it looks INSANE.
It took us 2 days non-stop to get the whole thing baked and decorated and what a beauty it is. Shaikha's birthday must have been pretty special for this to make an appearance along with dozens of matching Unicorn cupcakes.
Layers of chocolate and vanilla sponges in pretty Unicorn pastel shades of Swiss meringue buttercream frosting, decorated with sprinkle choux bun profiteroles, eclairs, macarons, Ferrero Rocher cones, piped buttercream flowers, candied popcorn and baked buttermilk doughnuts galore. I don't care if people say you can't really pick your favourite child etc or if I sound biased, but I love this croquembouche creation of ours to bits and above all the rest. How could you not!?
While delivering this to a location smack in the middle of London a bystander was staring at it gapey-mouthed and asked a hundred million questions while I was carrying it like my most precious little baby that weighed a ton - "Ohmygod what is that?! Croquembouche what?? What is it for? Who is it for? I bet it is a foreigner who bought that because no one from this country would, it's far too extravagant!"
Umm what?!? Yes, okay this particular customer may have a "foreign" name but I have no idea where they are from and frankly, don't think it's any of my business as we love all our customers as they clearly have great taste in common. The assumption that only "foreigners" would order something extravagant was possibly one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard, especially as they are still the minority and for us to target our business to a small sect of society would be pretty silly...and I have heard some real sillies over the years. Plus...I'm freakin "foreign" myself, so? Some people...tut tut.
Thankfully good taste and cake knows no borders.
Lots of love,
Reshmi xoxo
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