Steel City Cakes, Abbeydale Road

I’ve watched this shop front change over the past few months ,as I pass it quite regularly, from a strange looking empty space with huge windows to something resembling an actual bakery. Recently they’ve added chairs and tables outside, started serving tea and coffee and a sign on the window declaring ‘Vegan and Gluten-Free options available!’. This weekend, after popping into town to get some flesh coloured plugs (to help maintain my new professional façade) and  picking up the latest Vice and Now Then magazines, a vegan cupcake seemed the best way to end this afternoon of hipster stereotype leisure activities, so I went in to see what the deal was. 

No one could fail to notice the ‘cute cupcake’ craze which has taken over many city bakeries, Sheffield especially, so I was unsurprised to see this was mainly what the shop was offering. I spoke to the shopkeeper who, as you might imagine for a man who owns a cake shop, was very welcoming and friendly. The whole place has a nice, honest, family-run feel to it, he jokingly announced 'we don't stand on ceremony here' as he passed a bag of sugar and a spoon over the counter to a customer. When I asked about the sign he said they were hoping to introduce more vegan options over the coming weeks, and that for the time being I could order pretty much any flavour and they could make it at a day’s notice- a bold (and v tempting) promise! He also told me his 14 year old daughter was vegan (albeit to his slight dismay), which is encouraging and hopefully means there will be lots of nice vegan treats round the corner soon!

The cake itself was a vanilla sponge with faux-buttercream. The cake itself was a bit dry and slightly on the chewy side, but the frosting was amazing and definitely made up for this. It was actually nice to have a dairy-free cake which wasn’t greasy (as butter etc is often substituted for vegetable oil), and I’m quite interested as to what the recipe contains. Plus he let me have it for £1.50 rather than £1.95 as they were a little smaller than the regular cupcakes. The other cakes in the window looked great, with some interesting flavours, despite the slightly odd layout of the shop. If I hadn't been in a rush to get home I'd have sat outside as today was a particularly lovely September afternoon. I’ll definitely be back to check on the progress of this fledgling business (hard not to as I pass it pretty much everyday) and hopefully get to try some more flavours soon! 

The only dampener on my lovely Sunday afternoon was hitting another car's wing mirror in Tesco car park...whilst the driver was stood next to it.