Master baker

Rollicking, racy and risqué. To the Londoners bringing sexy to the city…

Surprisingly, Patrick Cox’s new shop isn’t in the business of fine footwear. ‘In this neighbourhood?’ says the legendary shoe designer with a laugh. ‘No way. You couldn’t sell £500 shoes here.’ Instead, the neon-lit, glossy black store sells cakes, laid out like jewels, and saucily decorated with ‘cocks, tits and ass’. Patrick was brought up on ‘white-trash Americana cakes baked by my mom’. When he moved to London, she sent him cake parcels, ‘and all my friends would descend and devour them in a day’. The idea grew then. He even had a name so good he couldn’t let it go to waste, but he was too busy designing shoes to do anything about it.

Then a year ago a friend offered him an empty shop in Soho. The shop used to be a sex shop, with a sex shop downstairs, and a sex shop next door. ‘And finally I got the chance to yell “It’s perfect! Cox Cookies Cake.” I told my mom and she said, “Oh Patrick, I know where you’re going with this.” And I said, “Yup, we totally are.” But really I never planned to actually make cock cakes: I thought it would put people off. But then 10 people a day were coming in to the shop saying, “We see the cakes, we see the cookies but where are the cocks?”’