A dream in the middle of London

Although I was not able to enjoy the food at the Borough Market I was excited to find Cream Dream, a vegan pastry cafe. The bakery was going to be opened in Ukraine but because of the war they decided to open in London. All the workers are from Ukraine.

Before I even entered the cafe, pink and flowers were spilling out into the street. When I first entered the cafe, I noticed that there was pink everywhere. They had flowers hanging down from the ceiling and there were fairy lights; it felt so magical. The environment was peaceful. The customers were not very loud and I could hear Ukrainian music playing in the background. On the walls, there were paintings by Ukrainian artists and one wall had pictures and information on different famous Ukrainian women.

The cafe sold many types of food such as sandwiches, wraps, and drinks, like coffee, tea, and lemonade, but my favorite foods were the desserts. The desserts were already made and displayed in a glass case to show off to customers. Everything looked so incredibly delicious I couldn’t wait to try them. I’ve tried 3 of their items and they all passed my expectations.

The first item that I tried was the honey cake with cherries, which is a traditional Ukrainian pastry. Honey cake is a very moist layer cake almost like it had a juice poured over each layer as they were being built. It had relatively large pieces or even whole sour cherries between the layers as well as some sort of cream. The outside of the whole cake was covered in crumbled honey cake. The cake was topped off with what I believe to be white chocolate in the shape of a honeycomb and just for a little extra, honey was put into some of the holes of the honeycomb. The second item that I tried was the Rhubarb tart with almond, which was a tart with rhubarb on the top. I had never tried rhubarb before but I know people who like it so I was excited to try it. I was expecting something sweet which the rhubarb was not, but despite that I still really liked it. I was also surprised when I realized that the rhubarb had a layer of what seemed to be gelatin. This was quite new to me as I had never seen anything like it before. It made me wonder if it was a common thing to do in Ukrainian desserts and/or food or if it was just some fancy thing I’ve never seen before. The third item was just a tart but it was delicious. The outer walls of the crust were a little difficult to cut though with a fork but it was fine. I don’t see this as a particularly big issue because traditionally you are meant to eat it with your hands. The filling of the tart wasn’t particularly sweet either but I found that I quite liked it that way and honestly would probably prefer it like that rather than it being particularly sweet. The first time I went, I took a friend with me. They ended up ordering the strawberry tart and the magic lavender lemonade. Cream Dream sells lemonades and different types of teas including Ukrainian teas. I didn’t know this at first but the lemonade my friend had ordered was actually a type of tea that changes color when lemon juice is added.

There were no performers at the bakery but I did pass 2 performers in the tube station on my way back to the hotel. While they both sang, one played simple songs on his guitar and the other had an entire amp system set up. They had different styles of performing with the first reminding me of Jamaican music while the other was more pop rock.