The Final Piece

The final piece (or should that be slice?) in our nefarious plans for world domination came together this week - home-made cake. (Sounds of Dr-Evil style chuckling, etc.).

The cakes are courtesy of the newest member of the Mostly Books team, Alison. All this week our regulars have been sampling her cappucino cake, victoria sponge sandwich (made with buttercream and real raspberry jam) and lemon drizzle cake.

The cappucino cake was the clear favourite - and - being in a somewhat whimsical mood this week with a couple of decent night's sleep under my belt - I got me to thinking 'if this cake were a book, what book would it be?'.

The cappucino was definitely The Kite Runner of the three. Moist, flavoursome, multi-layered, universally admired by those that know their cake. After eating it, you have to think whether this was the best cake you've ever eaten, with everything else seeming a bit bland for a while afterwards.

Second was the Victoria Sponge - The Crowded Bed of the three. Initially considered a bit old-fashioned perhaps, pleasantly surprisingly and high-quality when tasted. This is surely a cake of quality, durability - more please.

Finally, the Lemon Drizzle. The What Was Lost of the three. In comparison with the high standards set by the other two, this had bags of potential and one to watch for the future, but needs more lemon.

So - if the freshly-ground, single origin coffee or fairtrade tea haven't grabbed you up until now, the new home-bake range makes it to the menu next week (in time for Abingdon's farmer's market on Monday morning). Hooray.

This week we did a bit of rearranging of the window display:

Yes, the deckchair is back. This is in anticipation of a very important event in two week's time: our first birthday - can you believe that? Just as we tried to blog each day as we counted down to opening all those months ago, we'll try to do a countdown again. And of course, you're all welcome to join us on June 30th at the shop for a glass or two of champagne...