National Baking Week: Baketopia at Kingly Court

Owl cookies hang on frosted branches, marshmallows toast on the cake bonfire, cake vegetables are ready for harvest in the vegetable patch and the magnificent rainbow cake unicorn takes centre stage. This is Baketopia: a completely edible, eye-rubbingly realistic woodland wonderland of sweet, baked dreams. This weekend’s free pop-up event kick-starts National Baking Week and consists of an awe-inspiring installation housed in a shop space of Kingly Court.

The bakers of Baketopia include the celebrated Tattooed Bakers, Nevie Pie Cakes, Caking It, Cake Revolution and Conjurer’s Kitchen, among others. This enchanting environment may be too beautiful to even imagine biting into.

The focal point of the pop-up is truly a showstopper. If unicorns were real and edible, then The Tattooed Bakers have definitely created the perfect definition of one. Its white chocolate body is lifelike in anatomy, its creamy yellow hair fine and delicately twisted, and its horn and hooves gold leaf-coated. But the magic lies inside! Under its skin is a rainbow-coloured and gorgeously tasty layered cake!

Other masterpieces include flawless mushroom macarons, frog-shaped cookies that may be dipped into the JUST MILK sponsored mini milk waterfall, and carrot cake pulled from the spiced chocolate cake soil of the appetising vegetable patch. Sarah King, the baker behind Caking It and the vegetable cakes, exhibits her passion to create and experiment beyond the “boundaries of what can be made with sugar” and to produce baked goods that realistically resemble other foods.

The talented Miss Cakehead, who curated this show of over 3000 portions of baked deliciousness, confirmed it really is a dream come true “to make a utopian landscape, good enough to eat, which would inspire others to bake”. To further stimulate baking creativity in Baketopia’s visitors beyond the pop-up, John Whaite, who won the 2012 Great British Bake Off and who is the ambassador for National Baking Week, has crafted five recipes especially for visitors to take home and try for themselves.

Just when it couldn’t get any better, Baketopia encourages a show of appreciation from visitors via a donation of £2 to Great Ormond Street Hospital, National Baking Week’s charity partner, to contribute towards a ward kitchen in the new respiratory unit.

Angela Chan
Photos: Monika Jørgesen

Baketopia is on at Unit 1.16, next to Sutra Cookery School in Kingly Court near Carnaby Street from 12pm-7pm on Friday 11^th and Saturday 12^th October, for further information or to book priority entry visit here.

For further information about National Baking Week visit here.