It came of age during the red-velvet craze, but Notting Hill’s petite Hummingbird Bakery still sends the sugary hearts of cupcake fiends aflutter. On every day of the week, there are rainbows of American-style cupcakes in timeless flavours like Oreo, carrot cake, and (of course) red velvet, as well as vegan varieties and super-cute occasion cupcakes dressed in edible glitter and the like for whatever holiday is around the corner.
There are supplementary treats like brownies, whoopie pies and layer cakes, but most people are here for the slick-looking cupcakes. Their appeal lies in the icing – that texturised buttercream crown. It’s not overly cloying and it’s well-proportioned with the sponge base. Unfortunately, not everything smacks of day-of-baking freshness.
On a recent cupcake pit-stop (yes, that’s a thing), the cake base was just too dry and crumbly, tasting on the cusp of stale. Still, the icing was perfection. As this place is always full of bumbling tourists and there are only a handful of seats, we recommend that you take your cake to go and skip the extra eat-in charge.