London’s hotel patissiers battle as cakes become big business

Once we were encouraged to say it with flowers; now we say it with cake. Nothing says I’m thinking of you quite like a pistachio Paris-Brest or Tahitian vanilla mousse from one of this country’s new “haute patisserie” superstars, and the taller, the prettier, or the downright more over-the-top the better.

Providing the ammunition for this one-upmanship are the patisserie counters of London’s smartest hotels. Michael Kwan, executive pastry chef at the Dorchester, says a lot of his clients these days prioritise the visual impact of a cake over its taste. “It’s mainly about size,” he says. “I’ve had a request for a cake so high it touched the ceiling.” (The ceiling in question was 3.5m high.) Another was for a 2m croquembouche delivered to the steps of a private jet, and he once made a cake so large it couldn’t get through the hallway door and it had to be dismantled and reassembled again. “The biggest challenge tends to be transportation,” he says — although not in the case of the cake shaped like a Chinese pagoda ordered by one couple. “That was actually normal sized, but it was so detailed it took a team of three of us three days to make and decorate.”

When he’s not overseeing complicated engineering projects, Kwan and his team of 24 are responsible for the Cake & Flowers shop at the newly revamped hotel. There’s a range of small cakes, plus a large vegan one enrobed with a chocolate coating so shiny you could see your face in it, and a vanilla Saint Honoré, made with circles of puff pastry, filled with crème diplomat, whipped Chantilly cream and caramel-glazed choux balls.

It’s a sign of how the standalone patisserie shop/café has in a few short years become a part of every five-star London hotel’s DNA. Realising they pretty much had the monopoly on the country’s supply of highly skilled, usually French-trained pastry chefs, it made sense to offer the intricate pastries and cakes they were already creating for hotel guests to all.

The Connaught started the trend with the launch of its patisserie, complete with separate entrance, in 2020, under the leadership of Nicolas Rouzaud, who had made his name at Le Bristol Paris before moving to the Lanesborough in London. The Berkeley soon followed with Cedric Grolet, and his trompe-l’oeil fruit. This season, it’s the Frenchman’s sharp-meets-sweet apple with a hint of dill and his zingy lemon with zest-infused ganache that have had visitors to his London shop swooning, both so lifelike it’s as if they had been picked straight from the tree. Not to be outdone, Claridge’s has its ArtSpace café, launched nearly three years ago. It has just been named best pastry shop in the world by La Liste, the French equivalent of our 50 Best awards, which has further shone a light on the work of pastry wunderkind Thibault Hauchard.

The Connaught patisserie was rebranded under Rouzaud’s name this year — proof, if it were needed, of the new pulling power of pastry chefs. With their highly Instagrammable creations, they are becoming the celebrity chefs of their day. It helps that Rouzaud made the cake to mark David Beckham’s retirement from football, a simple sponge decorated with, what else, two golden balls made of chocolate (or “deux ballons d’or”, as Rouzaud more delicately puts it).

“In pastry, we used to cater for weddings and birthdays but we are doing all kinds of celebrations now, such as retirement parties, welcoming new members to a team… And sometimes, of course, there is no reason. Just because it’s Thursday,” Rouzaud says.

He has an evolving collection of eight to ten different cakes on display every day, which change with the seasons, ranging from fig tarts with pine nut frangipane to a jewel-like apple sponge with yoghurt and basil mousse icing, plus two cakes that never come off the menu: the Connaught’s signature Connaughty Hound, a chocolate-mousse cake shaped like a greyhound, and his signature pecan sponge with praline and vanilla mousse. “We have one customer who parks up outside in a very beautiful car and comes in and buys the whole display, about 50 cakes,” Rouzaud says. “It causes a panic as we have to refill the empty counter as quickly as we can.”

With 48 hours’ notice, he can make most of the cakes in larger sizes — although “not the greyhound. I think it would look odd having a large dog, and besides, the mould took six to eight months to make in the first place”. Then there is the fully bespoke side of the business, where you are limited mainly by your imagination. He thinks television programmes such as Bake Off: the Professionals, where master patissiers compete to make the most complex creations, have opened some customers’ eyes to what can be produced. The most challenging cakes he has made were a model of the Eiffel Tower and a 1.5m croquembouche made of red choux buns for 150 people. “Believe me, that is very difficult, more of an architectural challenge than anything else,” he says.

Most, though, show quite down-to-earth tastes. “Cake can impress in a way other food doesn’t, but it has to combine looking good with tasting good,” Rouzaud says. “It should be an emotional experience. Sometimes people ask for a simple sponge with buttercream and we try to push them a bit. We say, ‘OK, if you want, but it’s not how to get the best from us.’”

Cakes have always been big business at Claridge’s, which will be adding a bakery next door to ArtSpace next year. Hauchard has a team of 30, responsible for making 300,000 cakes a year for the hotel’s afternoon tea service alone. To that you can add the 36,000 cakes he makes for the café, not to mention the 6,000 Christmas puddings his team make every year. The work of one former member of his team, Ling Li, demonstrates the kind of talent at his disposal. Her beautifully decorated mah jong tiles, made with matcha chocolate around a passionfruit and mango ganache, show the eye for detail required to produce patisserie at this level (instagram.com/storyofling).

“Orders for our large cakes used to be for the weekend, but increasingly it’s every day now,” Hauchard says. Larger versions of the caramel Saint Honoré and the chocolate mousse cake stamped with the Claridge’s crest are the two most popular orders, as well as more bespoke cakes, which can cost up to £1,000 depending on size and complexity. So what’s his favourite? “Actually, I have quite simple tastes,” he says. “I like a crème brûlée or chocolate eclair.”

Tony Turnbull