Vegan bakery finds in London

In my all-round dedication to bringing you the finest vegan baked goods in London, I've really been pushing myself this month.

A quick browse on the Borough market website showed that there's a new allergen-free bakery stall in town called Free From Bakehouse. Just for your benefit, you understand, I decided to go check it out.

It's not an exclusively vegan bakery, more's the pity, but when I dropped by, there were a good few vegan options, including cupcakes, flapjakes, banana bread and rocky road, and it was those last two I got stuck into.

I only realised after the fact that the reason they're called the Free From Bakehouse is that they make gluten free stuff. Duh!

It's to their tribute then that I didn't realise it all while actually eating that that banana chocolate chip slice that it had no gluten, or for that matter, no sugar either. It could have done with a little more moisture, but was otherwise lovely and bouncy and had a nice touch of cinnamon in.

The rocky road was delicious too, hugely rich and all the better for it.

The second bakery pitstop came courtesy of one of those Sliding Doors type moments of serendipity. I ended up being late for work and taking a slightly different route in, meaning I wandered past a stall that mentioned vegan cake. The stall hadn't set out its wares, given the earliness of the morning, so I resolved to return at later.

I hotfooted it back at lunchtime, and met with Raffo & Ridgeway. They're not a all vegan, but they're very vegan friendly - off a small stall, they had three vegan items: a summer vegetable pie, all nestled in filo (that's phyllo to you good folk Stateside); a vegan health bar (the flapjack's more glamourous cousin; and a cookies and cream cupcake.

Can you guess which one I went for? Yep, all cake, all the time.

It was just what you need in a cupcake - dark under layer, creamy over the top top, and half a cookie on top. You've got to love that shizzle.

I'm a bit of a convert to Raffo and Ridgeway - they're very friendly in person and on Twitter, and when they ran out of vegan coffee and walnut cake before I could come and remove a sizeable portion from them, they did promise to make another.

The only downside? Their location on Lower Marsh Market means not enough people will get to sample their lovely baked goods. If you're in south London, do yourself a favour and head over there.