Selfridges Food Hall and Lola's Cupcakes (London, day 4)

I went to the Selfridges Food Hall almost every day of my stay in London. Not just to buy food (I don't really have that much money) but to look at the beautiful cakes, pies and macarons... One day,  I was there in the evening and one of the patisseries (I forgot which one it was and the box that the cake came in just said Selfridges Food Hall!) had a discount on the Red Velvet cake and Chocolate cakes. It's the second bakery on the left, if you come to the food hall from the main building.

How could we possibly resist a cake ON SALE? So yes, the Red Velvet cake came home with us.  But maybe it would have been better to buy the chocolate cake. This one wasn't that good. It tasted good enough to eat, but nothing special. The frosting that you can see on the picture wasn't cream cheese frosting, but the classic frosting, made with flour and milk. I'm not a fan. I even made it myself once, but I still prefer the cream cheese frosting. The cake was also a little burnt. It didn't show, of course, because of the color. I like this fact about dark cakes. It helps me too sometimes. :) I'm definitely coming back to this shop, since there were so many luscious cakes and pies and cupcakes to choose from. There is no option to eat in though; you can either take the packed cakes home or eat them at the counter on the other side of the food hall. That can be a problem though, if you don't carry a fork with you at all times.

This is the Red Velvet Cupcake from Lola's Cupcakes (yes, we went there again). The frosting on top is cream cheese frosting. It was definitely better than the red velvet cake we had bought earlier. And doesn't it look delicious?

I must say that I'm not a fan of Red Velvet cake at all, so I'm not very objective. But I can certainly say that Lola's cupcake was better. However, every time I see red velvet cakes, I ask myself, why is coloring the cake batter with huge quantities of food coloring (which, by the way, is toxic) so acceptable? I only attempted to color the batter for my cupcakes once, but when I poured a few spoonfuls of the coloring into the bowl and saw that it had no effect, I just stopped right there because I didn't want anyone to eat something so full of chemicals. To color the whole bowl of batter, I would've had to pour the whole bottle of coloring in it and even the instructions on the bottle stated that this was too much!  There are things in our food that are far less toxic than colorings, but I don't hear anyone talking so excessively about these. Which is weird. I wouldn't mind using natural food colorings though, if I knew where to find them, so if you know where to get them, please leave a comment! I might even make real Red (and not brown) Velvet cupcakes myself one day.

Selfridges Food Hall

400 Oxford Street, W1A 1AB