Bageriet

Bageriet is a Swedish bakery on Rose Street, the narrow pedestrian lane that links Garrick Street and Floral Street a short step from the Covent Garden Piazza. The name is simply the Swedish word for "the bakery", and that plainness suits the place: everything on the counter is baked fresh each day in the kitchen downstairs, so the smell of cardamom and cinnamon often reaches you before the shopfront does.

This is a small operation built around traditional Swedish recipes rather than a broad cafe menu. The cake list is led by the Prinsesstarta, the classic princess cake of light sponge, raspberry compote, vanilla custard, fresh cream and marzipan, alongside a Schwarzwald cake of meringue, toasted hazelnuts, cream and dark chocolate, a flat chocolate cake with fudge topping, and coffee and almond cakes. Whole cakes are made in a ten-portion size, which makes the shop a useful stop for a birthday or a dinner party.

Swedish bakery in Covent Garden, from kanelbullar to pepparnotter

The vetebrod, or sweet yeasted buns, are the everyday draw. Kanelbullar, the cinnamon buns, are rolled from a cardamom dough, and they sit beside sugar pretzels, blueberry buns with vanilla custard, apple buns and a hazelnut brioche topped with an almond florentine. Larger cinnamon and cardamom lengths serve six to eight people and are meant to be cut at the table. Swedish biscuits are sold in 200g bags, from chocolate cuts and Brussels biscuits rolled in pink sugar to fork-stamped cinnamon biscuits, oat biscuits with sultanas, spiced pepparnotter and cardamom Goteborgs biscuits.

What to expect on a visit

Expect a compact frontage, a short queue at busy times and a counter that reflects what came out of the oven that morning, so the choice is widest early. The bakery opens Monday to Saturday and closes on Sundays, and it shuts for a summer holiday each year, so check before a special trip in August. It is one of the more distinctive bakeries in Covent Garden, and if you want an ice cream after your cinnamon bun, Oliphant's in the Market Building is two minutes away.