Cake by Post: The Honest Answer
We do not post cakes. The only thing that leaves this kitchen by post is the shortcrust cookies, £20 by Royal Mail first class — biscuits survive a sorting office, and a cake held together by cream does not.
Cakes go in a car: delivered across Berkshire and the counties beside it from £30, quoted by distance, or collected free from Bracknell. If you need a cake to arrive in another part of the country tomorrow, the rest of this page explains what you should actually be looking for.
What can actually be sent, and how?
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
Shortcrust cookies, posted Royal Mail first class — the one thing this kitchen sends through the post anywhere in the UK | £20 |
Cake delivered by car Quoted by distance from RG12 0UY, up to about 29 minutes out Berkshire and the counties beside it | £30 |
Collection from Bracknell By appointment, boxed for the journey any cake we make | Free |
The cookies are the national product and they have their own page. For a cake, how delivery is quoted covers the area and the price, and the service areas list all 49 places with the drive to each.
Tell us what you are trying to send
We reply within 24 hours with a price. No deposit is taken until you are happy with the quote.
Not ready to send it? What follows answers most of what people ask first.
How long it takes
7–10 days for a simple design, at least 14 for two tiers.
Sooner is sometimes possible: a rush adds 50% when the notice is under 7 days, if the diary is clear.
In a hurry? Bento cakes take 3–5 days.
Delivery
From £30, quoted by distance from RG12 0UY.
Collection from Bracknell is free — see the areas we cover.
Paying
50% deposit to hold your date; orders under £50 are paid in full.
Balance 3 hours before collection, or cash on the day.
The deposit is non-refundable but transferable with 4 days' notice — full terms.
What is the difference between a letterbox cake and a cake?
Everything except the word. A letterbox cake is designed from the parcel backwards: it has to survive two days unrefrigerated, several drops, and a slot in a door. That rules out fresh cream, soft fillings, height and any decoration that can be crushed — which is why the things that actually arrive by post are brownies, blondies and dense loaf cakes. They are good at what they do, and what they do is not what a birthday cake does.
| Built for | A letterbox | A table |
|---|---|---|
| Filling | None, or set caramel | Cream, curd, fresh fruit |
| Keeps | A week or more | About two days |
| Needs a fridge | No — that is the point | Cool room, sometimes a fridge |
| Height | Shallow, to fit the slot | Tall, layered, often tiered |
| Decoration | Printed or none | Piped, modelled, written on |
| Who is it for | Somebody at a distance | A room, on a particular day |
If the left-hand column is what you need, a national letterbox company is the right supplier and we will tell you so. If the right-hand column is, read on.
Why will a cream cake not survive the post?
Because a parcel network is warm, rough and unpredictable, and a layered cake is cold, fragile and on a clock. There is no refrigeration anywhere between the kitchen and the door, which for a cream-filled cake is a food-safety problem rather than a quality one. The structure is the second failure: a layered cake is held together by the cream between the layers, not by the sponge, so a parcel turned on its side arrives as the ingredients of a cake rather than as a cake.
And the clock finishes it. These cakes have about two days of good life; a parcel takes one or two and nobody will promise which, so a birthday cake posted on Thursday is a lottery for Saturday. Everything on the cake care page about keeping a cake cool and flat is exactly what a sorting office cannot do.
What does this kitchen send through the post?
Shortcrust cookies, and only those: sold by the kilo, packed tightly and sent Royal Mail first class for £20 anywhere in the United Kingdom. They work for the same reason the cakes do not — a baked biscuit with no cream in it has weeks of life, no temperature requirement and nothing to crush except itself. The owner asks us to say plainly that breakage in the post is not something she can be responsible for, which is the honest condition on any posted food.
For anything else, the options are a car or your own hands: delivery from £30 to an address within about 29 minutes of the kitchen, or free collection from Bracknell with a 6-inch cake boxed for the journey and a word about how to carry it.
What else do people ask?
Allergies? Our kitchen handles all 14 of the allergens UK law requires us to declare, so nothing we bake is free from any of them. What is in each cake, and our hygiene rating.