London does summer desserts very well – and this year, subtlety is firmly off the menu. We’re talking a mix of sweet and salty, nostalgic flavours, experimental ice creams and puddings that sound slightly unhinged but somehow make perfect sense.
With the last golden evenings of August slipping away (although let’s all manifest September sunshine, shall we?), now is the time to chase down the city’s sweetest hits. Some are cool and creamy, some are ridiculously indulgent, and at least one looks like it escaped from a dockside kitchen after dark.
So, before autumn arrives with its inevitable craving for sticky toffee pudding, here are six desserts to devour while summer is still hanging on.
Crème Banana Bread Ice Crème
Crème has long had us in a chokehold over its cookies, but now the baked goods store has taken one of our favourite sweet treats and made it considerably more tempting and tasty: banana bread, transformed into ice cream. The limited-edition Banana Bread Ice Crème gives you the comforting, caramelised flavours of banana bread in cold, creamy form. We’re placing bets on whether the tub will last the journey home!
Hot Milk Trash Pie Pudding
This might be the summer’s most bonkers dessert. Created by Hot Milk for Round the Dock at Canada Water (running until the end of August), the limited-edition Trash Pie Pudding takes inspiration from the area’s dock-worker history and turns pie and mash into a sweet creation, complete with pie crust, mash-mallow, jellied sweet “eels”, seaweed sprinkles and pistachio ‘liquor’. Yes, really. It sounds chaotic; that is precisely the point.
The first 100 customers on Saturday 22nd August will get a free pudding at Canada Water’s Round The Dock.
Sakurado Mille-Crêpe Cake
Sakurado Japanese Patisserie Chinatown is the place to go when you want something a little more decadent. These desserts are almost a work of art, looking like they took approximately 400 hours to make. The cafe’s signature Franco-Japanese mille crêpe cakes are built from around 30 delicate layers of thin crêpe and cream, with flavours including matcha, black sesame, yuzu and hojicha. Light and wobbly but beautifully precise, they’re basically the dessert equivalent of quiet luxury – so sit back with a spoon and enjoy.
Badiani Gelato
Badiani Gelato has multiple locations across the city, but the Mayfair spot, nestled inside Mercato Mayfair, is one of our favourites to frequent. Well deserving of a place on any summer dessert hit list, sometimes the answer is simply gelato. The Florentine institution has become a London favourite for silky, intensely flavoured scoops, with its famous Buontalenti – a creamy, minimalist Fior di Latte-style flavour – and the dark chocolate sorbet among the ones to seek out. Grab a cone and eat it outside while basking in the glorious London sunshine we are still lucky enough to be getting.
Bun House x Happy Endings
Bun House Chinatown is best known for its pillowy Cantonese buns, but now there’s a hot new dessert collaboration which makes for even more reason to take a detour down the lantern-laden streets. The bakery has joined forces with Happy Endings, the cult London ice cream sandwich brand founded by pastry chef Terri Mercieca, bringing its playfully indulgent approach to the Chinatown via dessert buns stuffed with Happy Endings’ malty milk ice cream (available until mid-September).
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