Violet Cakes

Another fine «don’t believe the hype» example. After listening to a friend of mine waxing poetic about «this little place in Hackney» for ages I decided to have a go.
The place is indeed tiny and the seats are outside; apparently there are more at the back (?) but you wouldn’t know as they don’t care to tell you. The small tables are taken by young, urban, soy latte sipping skinny white girls whose looks don’t immediately scream «cake eaters» to me. Most of the sweets on display (apart from some of the cupcakes) were brown/​beige/​black/​gritty-​looking, giving off that joyless, smug, pseudo good-​for-​you, gentrified east end vibe that seems to imply that things like granulated sugar, strawberry jam and sprinkles are slightly vulgar. And they might as well be, but you get the idea. It’s that kind of place.
I must admit that I struggled to find anything that looked appetizing (I am not a cupcake person) then after some consideration settled for a lemon drizzle — the only foodstuff that didn’t look like it would find me unworthy of eating them. And it was a totally ok polenta type cake, if you ask me, but also absolutely average. Nothing that would justify the hefty price tag. My friend opted for a «victoria sponge» that looked like a small cupcake cut in half with cream + jam filling, the upper half perching precariously on top of the creamy mess. Difficult to eat, eye wateringly expensive (like 4 pounds for a glorified cupcake) and again, totally average. Another friend got a scone with cream and paid a fiver. For a single, cold scone. I’m always fearful of going to places that don’t display menus/​prices on their website, and this is why.
The iced coffees my friend had raved about were just… bitter and pointless. They tasted EXACTLY like the cold leftover of the instant milky coffee I make myself at home every morning — except mine actually tastes sweet. The sign listed «sweet» and «salty» as options, and unless we’re talking about a new east end patois I’m not familiar with, I am not sure on what the «salty» tastes like.
The service was fine. Monosyllabic and vaguely sulky at the till, but I wasn’t expecting different. If I wanted a nice and chatty old english lady calling me «my love» I’d have gone to Suffolk. I got exactly what I ordered and didn’t have to wait, which is more than enough.
In short, it’s a slightly pretentious place cashing on the hipster adoration for ingredients with a pedigree. Enjoying this privilege costs money that would have gone much further elsewhere. Nothing was bad (except the vile coffees) and I understand that all is a matter of personal taste, but I didn’t eat anything here that I couldn’t get similar or much better in a city like London for half the price, so that’s a first and last for me.

My favourite bakery in London. I could eat here every day but the pounds would add up!

Woah sugarrush!
So this is a great little café and bakery, they serve nice hot drinks and sweet eats and you can sit in or take to go.
We did the later and found a small glass display case with cupcakes, cookies and other treats. We took a few to go. As others have commented, they are very, very, very sweet, but nice with a glass of milk. The vanilla mango one was particularly delicous.
The staff is friendly and I’ll have to come and grab a drink and sit in. But until then, if you need a bit of sugar in your life, you know where to go.

A weird location and an unexpected set-​up inside but a delicious banana cake slice was had and i had a taste of the chocolate caramel cupcake, very nice. Worth a detour if you’re in the area.

This is a very cozy café with free wifi and second-​floor seating. The soy latte I had was very good, but the pastries I got (coconut macaroon and cinnamon roll) were way too sweet for my liking. Still a decent place to work out of, and the baristas and cashiers are very friendly.

Super cute, but the cupcakes weren’t all they were cracked up to be.
Due to the cupcake craze of the last few years in the US, my wife and I have tried a lot of different cupcakes, and we know what we like. Sugar Sweet Sunshine in the Lower East Side of NYC is our gold standard, and Baked and Wired in DC turns out some pretty great stuff too. Violet, I’m sorry to say, is not in their league, or at least yesterday’s batch wasn’t.
We tried one strawberry and one red velvet cupcake, and both were moderately dry, cakey, and had icing that we both found too sweet. The strawberry flavor tasted slightly artificial, too, although that might have been due to the sugar. In a good cupcake, I’m looking for moist, not too crumbly cake, and icing that balances the sweetness. Especially in a red velvet cake, where cream cheese icing with a slight tang is my favorite. Sorry to say, these did not live up to those specs.
With that said, a bunch of their other stuff looks quite good, their location on an off-​the-​main-​road side street is quiet and appealing, and their outdoor seating out in front and in their back garden is great. We’ll come back and try something else next time, and maybe that’ll boost the rating a bit.

I went there again last week and there’s definitely been an improvement on the service! Everyone was kind and helpful so… hurra for Violet!

Great coffee and yummy cakes! It is an amazing bakery. Really cool because you can actually see how they bake everything. You can have your coffee and treats while checking how they bake their amazing cakes. They are really good. I was eager to try this place (I hear so much about it) and it did not disappointed me at all.
Besides, the place is really cosy and cute. Quite small but treats and sweets are totally worth it. It is mostly take away but if you are luck you can grab a seat inside. They serve Allpress coffee, which is amazing. I could not complaint of anything!
I don’t live nearby but I’ll come back for sure. It is worth it.

The baked goods here are great. They also make some interesting selections. But honestly each time I’ve gone here I grimace at the prices. Buying things and the cost associated with them is largely a gut reaction: do I feel it’s worth it. Each time I’ve gone there I ask myself if it is which means, to me, it’s just a bit too much for what you get. So stars knocked off for the price. The service is so so with some nice folk and some seeming like they couldn’t care less.

Holy moly, this is a fabulous bakery.
Cupcakes — frosting was rich, buttery and delicious. Cake was both moist and light. Sometimes these things are at odds with each other. Especially favored the salted caramel.
Carrot cake — tasted almost like pudding, it was so dense. This might be the best carrot cake I have ever had.
Biscuits — personally I’ve always been a skeptic about sweet biscuits (something about them is too dry). This one, however, was flaky and also crunchy, and also pre-​assembled with lemon clotted cream. Fan-​diddly-​astic.
Yum yum yum and more yum, that’s what I say!

My husband ordered my 30^th birthday cake from this bakery. I don’t want to ask him how much it cost, because it was money wasted. Red velvet cake, that just tasted really unpleasantly doughy, and was sort of dense and claggy. Probably the only cake that has ever gone unfinished in my house!

Wow! Don’t be fooled by this place’s unassuming, shabby chic appearance. This is one of the slickest bakeries I’ve been to in London.
The hot chocolate I had was real cocoa. The coffee was quality. They take their beverages as seriously as they take their confections. I was so impressed. The whoopie pies were a little too sweet for me but the cakes are divine.
A lot of thought has gone into the products this place serves and I think they deserve ⁵⁄₅ for that. It really shows — I have rarely found bakeries in London to be as good as their American counterparts but Violet is up to the same standards with a French twist. Honestly, Claire Ptak has brought American bakery standards to London and I promptly came home and added her book to my Amazon wish list…
I didn’t get a chance to sample the sandwiches but my friend who lives nearby says they’re great too.

Violet is fantastic! Even if you didn’t know that the owner studied with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, you would be charmed by this little slice of heaven. We took 3 subways (the underground) to get here and it was one of the highlights of our time in London.
The folks who work here are terrific and the cupcakes fantastic. We had a violet with choc cake, a salted caramel with choc cake and an almond polenta with plum. All fantastic but I think the almond polenta took the cake (so to speak).
Did you see the pics I posted. A picture’s worth a million words!
But why does Violet have two profiles on Unilocal?Is it because it is twice as good as everywhere else? Could be. I guess I will just have to post this twice.

After a few hours in Hackney on a cold Saturday, my friends and I visited Violet to warm up with some tea and cupcakes and macaroons. The treats were delicious in this cute little bakery boutique. A nice pit stop before a meal in London.

It takes a bit of effort to get here from where I live, but I don’t know if it’s worth traveling out for. But if you’re in the area, there’s no harming in giving into your sweet tooth. After noticing all the Chez Panisse stuff around, and learning that the owner of Violet use to be the pastry chef there, I had high expectations. After eating at Chez Panisse, and the Chez Panisse Café, I was super excited to have a taste of these Violet cakes.
I’ve only been here once, hence the 3 star rating. The salted caramel cupcake I had was okay. Nothing spectacular. Just okay. But I do love that they have a great selection of drinks to accompany all their treats.
But trust me, I’ll be back to give them another try! There’s so much to chose from! I need to try their Christmas pudding, their whoopie pies, they also have little Oreo cookie look-​a-​likes, an endless selection of cupcakes… it could go on forever.

Violet is not all about the cupcakes anymore. It has a selection of other cakes including flourless chocolate cakes, scones, brownies, muffins, cookies and more. Although their cakes are good, they’re not as amazing as they are often made out to be. A lot of this stuff is so sweet it burns my mouth to eat it and they are not exactly cheap with no discount for taking away. They also do sandwiches and quiches, all vegetarian but these are also very dear.
But the main reason I used to come here was to buy a loaf of St John’s sourdough bread. Initially, I thought, £3.50 wasn’t too bad. Then in the space of only a year or so the price has rocketed to £5, that’s right £5 for a loaf of bread!!! Now that’s where I draw the line. I’ll make the trip to E5 bakehouse in future, their’s are bigger and just as good for £3.50.

Cake. I’m a cake expert. Some might go as far as to say that I am The Queen of baked goods. This might be because I’m a girl who loves, (and I mean LOVES) sweet treats, or it could be that I grew up with a Mother who made a mouthwatering array of cakes on a daily basis growing up. I had friends around after school most days and I was the ginger kid wearing socks and sandals with a mono-​brow, I should not have been this popular, but my Mother helped.
When my sister was sent off to university, Mum baked her a tin of muffins and said, «that I’ll get you started.» She was right. Only 4 hours after we left her in the dorm, we got a phone call from her saying that she now had 2 new friends and they were all eating muffins with tea in her room. My Mum, she’s a clever woman. I digress, as I was saying — I know a good cake when I see one.
Violet is so cute, it could give you cancer. Okay maybe not, but someone just said that and I had to include it in this review! I came here for take-​away treats after hearing so much about the place and was blow away by the fabulous looking sweetness up on offer. Seriously beautiful cupcakes and birthday cakes, brownies and even quiches! I just have two little gripes with the place, firstly it’s stupidly priced, well over £2 a cake which I personally find a crime! Secondly, the treats here just aren’t that good. They are a great deal better than at the stall on Broadway Market which tends to serve up slightly dry versions, but still they are a little disappointing for the hype they get. Don’t let this stop you from visiting though, it’s totally adorable! I’m just not raving about them like everyone else.

Violet is a treat! Feel like a kid in a sweetshop when I come here.
Best Bread (St John’s Sourdough) — delicious Sandwiches, great buttermilk banana cake and you must indulge in the Coconut Macaroon!

Violet is a little gem of a bakery that can be tricky to find for someone who doesn’t know the area, but that makes it even more worth it. It was my final destination after a memorable afternoon cycling around East London, and even though I had to backtrack a few times to find Wilton Way, I am very glad that I did.
It’s teeny tiny place, with a café table out front on the sidewalk, two inside and then a few more in the garden area out back. In fact, I would say it’s more of a country kitchen with seating, because you can see the kitchen, and all the baking equipment while you are sampling the cupcakes.
I had just two mini cupcakes — coconut and violet. Both were delicately-​flavored, and just plain good. I ordered 6 more to take with me to sample with friends at home tonight.
Violet is a lovingly-​designed space with delicious treats, and the next time I visit London, I will definitely go back.

I think I may have just discovered the best cupcakes in London.
To be upfront with the information that goes into making this audacious statement, I should probably mention that I haven’t really had many other cupcakes in London. But I’ve sampled the wares of nearly every four– and five-​starred cupcake shop in New York and… I think these are better. Gasp!
Oh my lord. These cupcakes are incredible. I had rhubarb and rosewater, salted caramel, and elderflower. Don’t worry, they were mini, but they were so good I would have considered eating a full-​size one of each. That would probably put me in the hospital with a massive blood sugar overdose, but I would risk it for these cupcakes.
They’re all-​natural and organic, made with fruit purees and flower essences and espresso and good chocolate, not gross chemicals or scary artificial colors or a massive overload of unnecessary flavoring. They’re subtle but still manage to pack a serious punch of flavor in the buttercream frosting. And they’re adorably cute too.
In order to confirm the ultimate dominance of these cupcakes, I’ll just have to try more. Lots more. All the time. Sadly, they only appear to be at Broadway Market every Saturday. I’ll just risk the sugar overdose once a week then…