Review - Baked By Me Valentine's Cake

I can't remember the countless times (ok, a couple) that I've turned down the opportunity to review chocolate on this blog before. You see chocolate does not tempt me at all, as I don't really have much of a sweet tooth. The "no sweet tooth" rule is well and truly broken, however, when it comes to cake. In fact, I believe the first ever review I did on this blog was for cake. So when the folks at Baker Days contacted me asking if I wanted to review one of their personalised letterbox cakes for Valentine's Day, I had to say yes really, didn't I?

Letterbox cakes are cakes designed to fit through your letterbox, funnily enough - hence ideal for sending someone as a gift. I have to say, however, that we still have an original Victorian door, with what I can only guess is a Victorian-size letterbox, which I think is smaller than a modern one, so we often struggle with stuff not fitting through the letterbox, and our postman had to knock. Not a problem for me as I work from home, but something to bear in mind if you are sending a cake to someone and you don't want them to have to traipse to the post office depot to collect it.

Anyway, the cake arrived in its own little tin, with a personalised card and - nice touch for Valentine's day - a packet of lovehearts. (Yes, kids, I'm definitely eating all of those myself, soz.)

Inside was a foil-packed cake with the design and wording that I had pre-chosen:

It came with a handy little cardboard plate that made it relatively easy to cut:

 ...and eat!

I deliberately chose plain sponge cake as a) it's my favourite, and b) I've often found that it's the most difficult to get right in a non-homemade cake. If you or your recipient don't like sponge, there is also a choice of carrot cake, fruit cake, chocolate cake or even a gluten/wheat-free version.

The verdict:

I confess I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the cake. It was moist and very tasty, and didn't have that slight "hint of synthetic" that can sometimes come with a shop-bought sponge cake. I should confess at this point that I'm personally not a fan of icing, but did not find this overwhelming, and it seemed the right amount for a cake this size. We managed to get four decent portions out of it in total.

The kids of course loved it and now want one for their birthday! Even my husband - usually a terrible cycnic - was impressed, although to be fair his favourite thing about it was the pretty tin... The cakes retail at 14.99, which may seem like a lot for such a small cake, but I do think it would make a nice surprise for someone instead of flowers etc. Just first make sure they have a large letterbox!

__

Disclosure: I was provided with a free cake for the purposes of this review. All opinions my own.