London, UK

The second half of my recent trip to the UK was spent in London. I managed to actually spend some time with my nephew, Max (which is quite hard to do when he lives over an ocean), and I got to spend some time with Caleb doing, well, not a lot.

We stayed in Camden as I quite like it there, although it didn't occur to me that it was the beginning of the summer holidays in England, so it was even more crazy than usual. Which was fine, we just had to take the back roads so we could actually walk to places.

OK food wise, I'm just going to get a tiny little matter out of the way first, and that is Pizza Express. Please see a previous post for my love of this restaurant, but I have to let you know on this visit, there was a fantastic development; Pizza Express now do GF Dough Balls! Yes, the magical dough balls they've been serving for years are now available as a starter for us sad people that weren't able to eat them for the longest time. Thank you, Pizza Express for being just as wonderful as always.

Now that's dealt with I can move on to more GF goodness. As I said before we were staying in Camden (Town), and I knew there was a GF & Vegan bakery in the vicinity. Now, I'm not vegan. I try and eat veggie most of the time, we eat a lot of fake meat (when we can find GF versions; more on that in a future blog) and Caleb usually only eats fish. We also don't buy normal milk or butter because it can play havoc with my insides too, so our house can be pretty vegan friendly, but we are not vegan. So, it's safe to say I was far more excited because it was GF (obvs).

Cookies & Scream

It was raining and I couldn't quite figure out how to find this place. I knew roughly where it was, but after a few minutes of getting fed up, we finally found it and it's solely GF menu. On first impression, it didn't look like there were a huge array of items on offer that day, but these guys are in a tiny space and I didn't expect a full-blown bakery (there was also a lot more than I originally thought). They also put Peanut Butter in a lot of their items, and as someone who despises peanut butter this also limited my options quite a bit. So, I made some choices: a Salted Caramel Donut (2GBP), a Gosh! Brownie (2.50GBP) and a Chocolate Chip Cookie (2GBP).

The donut was probably my only disappointment. Cake-like in texture (like a lot of GF donuts are), it wasn't particularly more-ish. The flavour was lacking and it was kind of rubbery; not a great start, BUT enter the best brownie I have had in months. There are no words to describe the GOSH Brownie. It was soft, moist, extremely chocolatey, crumbly...basically, it was perfect. It was also giant in size which meant I could save half of it for later and that was not bad news. I was tempted to go back and buy a whole tray of them, but Caleb smartly advised me not to. Last up was the Choc Chip Cookie and it was beautiful. I expected their cookies to be good (look at the name), but this was glorious. Giant in size, it was crunchy but soft, salty but sweet, and crumbled right into my mouth; I couldn't stop eating it. Again, I could easily have eaten a whole tray of these with no problems. From tasting, I think they were made with cashew butter, but obviously I don't have their recipes, that's just a guess. Cookies & Scream also serve shakes and sundae's, which I didn't get to try, but you best believe on my next visit I will be lining up for any of those items.


Overall, if you like Peanut Butter definitely pay this place a visit, and if, like me, you don't, still go and die from forcing brownies and cookies into your mouth as quickly as you can; but avoid the donuts.

Ps. Also go have cocktails at Fifty Five in Camden and eat Chips from Poppies Fish & Chips (they do onion vinegar so if you're like me & love salt & vinegar drenched on your chips, you can use it in replacement of the devil gluten filled malt vinegar!) The chips are unreal.

The final blog from this trip will be about items I've found in supermarkets that are worth a grab. I had another bakery I wanted to visit but unfortunately the Underground was out of service on the day and I couldn't be bothered to get a bus (yes, I'm that lazy). So next time I'm in London, I'll be checking out Beyond Bread. Are there any other GF bakeries I should be looking out for when I'm there next? Let me know in the comments!