I have been smitten with London's The Great Cake Escape since I first read about them in Viv Groskop's The Guardian article "Do good feminists bake cupcakes?", and meant to do a post but to be honest, got lost spending several hours checking out all their amazing photos.
As for the political angle, I'll let Sadie Stein of Jezebel have the last word, because I'd rather focus on the totally wonderful concept of randomly dropping cupcakes and seeing what happens:
And however loaded their reemergence, I think we can all agree that the frosting/cake ratio that is a cupcake is objectively delicious. Why can't we all just accept that, sit down together, and eat them (unironically.)
What they do is, in the spirit of fun and mischief, leave cupcakes all over public spaces in London. You can read more in this Londonist interview:
When you leave a cake somewhere, do you hover around nearby to see if anyone takes it?
Cherry: Yeah, that’s half the fun. When we do ‘cake drops’ it’s fun to be able to place them surreptitiously and then hide around a corner, looking back to see if they’ve been taken or noticed. It’s fun to secretly observe people’s different reactions.
Fondant: We do indeed. It’s such fun to watch how people interact with their environment--do they stop and read the flag or follow the message and take the cake? We’ve developed some rather nifty stealth tactics! On busier cake drops, like Valentine’s weekend in Camden, we’d leave cakes next to people posing for photos then scurry away to watch them wonder where they appeared from.
I remember hovering on Brick Lane one Sunday. I’d unsuspectingly left a cake in front of a photographer, who was checking her images, in the hope of creating a little intrigue. Instead, the cake attracted a bigger, curious crowd so I took the opportunity to get up close and snap the scene myself. One guy even took a shot of me taking a shot of the cake. And the photographer...she was oblivious the entire time.
And this is from their latest email - hopefully some of our UK readers can join the celebration:
The Great Cake Escape celebrates its 1st birthday next week and we'd love you, cake takers and cake crusaders, to join us in celebrating a whole year of guerilla cake-dropping mischief.
On Saturday 22nd November, we'll be doing a special commemorative cake drop:
The Great Cake Escape 1st Birthday Cake Drop & Secret Street Tea Party
Location: Hoxton Square and Shoreditch streets
Date: Saturday 22nd November, starting at 12 noon and throughout the afternoon
To commemorate the inaugural cake drop that took place a year ago and the thousands of cakes that have escaped onto the street since, Cherry Bakewell and Fondant Fancy will be releasing hundreds of special birthday cakes onto the streets of Shoreditch. The cakes will be left in mystery locations for curious cake-takers to find and there will be one extra special cake, "the golden cupcake", for people to keep their eyes peeled for...whoever finds this one will be able to claim a special mystery prize!
After the hard work of cake-dropping, Cherry Bakewell and Fondant Fancy will be celebrating the project's 1st birthday with a little street tea party in the middle of Hoxton Square that afternoon and invite everyone to join them for a cup of tea and a sweet treat. Follow the trail of cakes and look out for birthday balloons to find them! Fingers crossed it doesn't rain...
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