When in London..

Want to experience London in a different way? During my trip to the capital of Britain I discovered another side of London that is perfect for sweet tooths like me. Here's two stops for when you're tired of shopping and need to recharge your batteries.

The first stop is Lola's, a cute bakery offering the best cupcakes I've ever tasted! And believe me, I've had my share of cupcakes! Their buttercream is the best and they almost look too good to eat. Just looking at these pictures again makes me want to go to London and go buy some again. Lola offers 14 different flavours in small and regular cupcake sizes. I tried the Vanilla (green topping with butterfly sprinkles in the second picture), the Chocolate (no image available) and the Rocky Road (2nd cupcake from above in the third picture). I really recommend the last one if you want to try something different, but still want to play safe. It has a great chocolate taste with some yummy marshmallows on top.

Lola's has 5 counters all over London. I visited their lovely counter in Selfridges (pic above). There were so much cute cupcakes, I thought I had arrived in a fairytale.

Cupcake images courtesy of Lola's

http://www.lolas-kitchen.co.uk/

If you're looking for a fashion experience, the Prêt-à-Portea room in The Berkeley is the place to be. When I saw H&M reporting about this, I was immediately sold. This concept is a fun way of how fashion and food can interact.

How it works:

Each season, the pastry chef from The Berkely gets invited to the fashion shows. From there, he starts working on ideas on how to create sweets that resemble the signature items from the desinger's collection. The result is a lovely tower of sweetness that, again, almost looks too good to eat!

I recommend to make reservations at least 2 weeks before you leave for London, because this thing is really popular!

Next up is your order: I have to admit I'm not that much of a tea person and I only went for the sweets, but I took the 'Wild Blossom and Berries Tea' and I enjoyed it anway. You can also order champagne if you want to. For the rest, you just get everything that's on the menu (per person), and that was simply too much to handle for me.

 The menu of sweet doom. Too much sweets to handle for my tiny stomach.

 

 The tea and sweets are presented in trendy Paul Smith china. Notice the card with my name on it ;)

First up were these sandwiches. I had absolutely no idea we were getting these. If I'd known, I wouldn't have had lunch before. My favorite one was the smoked salmon sandwich on the right.

Next up was the actual tower of sweetness. Each cake or pastry and it's origin was carefully explained by the waiter. I had pastries based on creations of Chanel, YSL, Sonia Rykiel, Anya Hindmarch, Erdem, Paul Smith, Jean Paul Gaultier, Jason Wu and Christopher Kane.

Here it is, the gorgeous mouthwatering tower of sweetness. My personal favorites were the Chanel clog cookie and the Sonia Rykiel vanilla and raspberry jam with the yellow hat.

And afterwards you get some extra random sweets to take home with you!

This was truly an amazing experience. I've never seen such original pastries in my life and I've discovered a whole new world of flavours while eating them. Also important, the service was heavenly. I felt like a real princess. All of that together makes it really worth the money and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's planning on going to London.

The Prêt-à-Porter is reservations only and is £35 per person.
Visit The Berkeley for more info and reservations.

After you paid a visit to these locations, you'll see that there's more to London than  just Mme Tussauds, the Big Ben or the London Eye. It's pastry paradise! And that coming from a Belgian girl, says a lot!