What twenty-four hours' notice buys you

Every order here needs a day. It is the most common question I get, so: here is what that day holds.

Sponges are baked and cooled the evening before, because a warm sponge tears under a crumb coat. Ganache is made the same night and left to set at room temperature — refrigerate it in a hurry and it goes grainy. Buttercream gets whipped in the morning, coloured by hand, and the flowers are cut off the terrace an hour before you collect, because a pansy on a cake at nine in the morning is a brown edge by two in the afternoon.

A kitchen that can hand you a decorated cake in two hours is a kitchen with cakes already sitting in a fridge. This one does not have those. The day's notice is the whole difference.