Reviewed - The London Dessert Collective

One of my favourite memories from this year's Allergy Show in London is the London Dessert Collective. We coeliacs, as a group, tend to be well acquainted with the rough-and-ready pasties and pies, biscuits and cookies, and tasty-but-quite-average-looking cakes. So the French patisserie style refinement of the LDC stall immediately drew the eye.

Decisions, decisions!

Although the LDC are not exclusively gluten free as a company, the items on offer for coeliacs are plentiful enough to be noteworthy, especially given how unusual and special some of them are.

I suffer from a pretty serious addiction to pistachio (I say 'suffer' but I really quite enjoy it), so the lovely-looking pistachio meringue cake was a no-brainer. To go along with it, I had to try a brownie. Yes, it does seem as though we are forever being offered brownies (currently purchasable in every Costa, Starbucks AND Cafe Nero, for heaven's sake), but the temptation of a fresh, gooey, rich brownie was too much to resist, especially when it's flavoured with salted caramel.

My sister bought a few of the macarons you can see in the picture above and kindly let me try the raspberry one. Although these morsels appear delicate, they pack one hell of a flavour punch! The raspberry shells are sweet and strong, and are cut through perfectly with the dark chocolate ganache. Heaven! She almost didn't get any of it!

When I got home, I tried the brownie and it, again, was wonderful. There is no picture of it, since I ate it so fast, so here's a (slightly fuzzy) pic of them on the stall. The salted caramel is bottom left.

Selection of brownies

My only slight let down with the brownie was that the rich chocolate completely overpowered the salted caramel that I'm assured was hiding in there somewhere. More of that salted caramel, please!

Given the deliciousness of the first two items I tried, I was filled with heady excitement by the time I got to the pistachio meringue cake, and here, I'm afraid, was my real disappointment. I really loved the guys at the LDC, so I'm loathe to say anything negative, but it would be no good to avoid the issue. This cake, they told me, consisted of layers of meringue, pistachio cream, and pistachio sponge. Ooh, my tastebuds were a-tingling! My fork dove in, but as soon as the meringue cracked, it sprung out of the box and half of it landed on the floor! It was simply laying on top of the cake, rather than being held down. Sad! The pistachio cream was beautiful, but there was so very little of it that this it was unable to hold the meringue in place.

Please excuse the chipped nail polish!

The real disappointment, however, was the sponge, which was so solid I struggled to get my fork through it. Combined with the green colour typical of pistachio cakes, it gave the appearance of a florist's oasis! Sadly, the sponge rendered it inedible, and what was left was consigned to the bin, which was a great shame. A lighter sponge and more pistachio cream would have made this a perfect pud but as it was, it fell short of being worth the £3 I had paid for it.

In all, there are more positives than negatives for the LDC, but if they can sort out their meringue cakes, I think there are few companies who could surpass them. I would definitely recommend a try if you're looking for something gluten free but with that air of class and refinement.

Read more about the LDC at their website.