Primrose Bakery, Cupcakes, Primrose Hill

NOTE: I am in London until the beginning of October, for Berlin Posts, please visit my Berlin, Favourites page or Places I’ve Eaten In

Even though I thought I was being careful, I’d managed to turn Layla into a little Suri Cruise. (Minus the helicopter rides and trying to rent all of Disney World but close enough.) Ironically, I always prided myself on a job well done with her, I had a well-rounded, exceptionally behaved three and a half-year old. I won’t say I had rules but I had guidelines. One cartoon per day of her choice at her time, for example. No more, yesterday I forgot her in front of CBeebies for 4 hours. Another day, she skipped lunch (because I didn’t make her any) and I only realised when I caught myself thinking she was looking unusually gaunt. To assuage my guilt at the sudden chaos I have introduced into her life, I take her for frequent trips to Primrose Bakery. I bundle Layla into our Smart car where she knows the two seat format will give her (and me) some respite from her sisters and we zoom down the hill, music blaring and windows rolled down.

(People laugh that I insist on keeping our Smart car with 3 children but my theory is; with only room for one more, you can focus on the child you’ve taken and avoid the wild-eyed-crazy-mom-on-the-edge-been-stuck-in-traffic-with-3-children. Now I just need to find someone to leave the other two with…any takers out there? I make cute children.)I am still not a fan of cupcakes (see post on Cupcake Berlin here) but in London, accompanied by a recently dethroned princess, I find myself being grateful for their abundance. I am never far from one; Lola’s, Hummingbird Bakery and one that I like (???) at Westfield Shopping Mall called Buttercup Cake Shop.

Primrose Bakery is closest to us and the mini cupcakes are a reasonable £5 for 4. When I worked at Melrose and Morgan, I used to make coffee for the women who own the shop, Martha Swift and Lisa Thomas. In fact, they started out selling their cupcakes at Melrose and Morgan before demand was so great that they opened up their own shop across the street.

The canary yellow shop is like one of those old-fashioned handmade wooden toys, full of unexpected details. It’s utterly feminine and the domain of women large and small. When I took my husband with us one day, I felt his testosterone being leached out of him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and declared it was time to go. Maybe not one for big boys who wear black and carry two blackberries but great for the two of us to smoke a peace pipe at.