Dan Lepard is an award-winning baker who has worked for great chefs all over the world, including Giorgio Locatelli and Alastair Little. He is the author of several books on bread and cake-making, including Exceptional Cakes: Baker and Spice (Quadrille, £5.99). These are the results of his exhaustive quest for the perfect cake.

Konditor & Cook

I lusted after Gerhard Jenner's macaroons at Justin de Blanc's deli in the Eighties, even then an extortionate £1 each. In those days Issy Blow and I would splurge our Tatler photography budget on cakes and champagne since, as Issy said, 'We can't be expected to starve!' Gerhard opened Konditor & Cook in 1993, and from that day to this has stayed the sweet prince of London's bakers. A lemon crunch cake sticky with tart syrup, moist black gingerbread mixed with spice and treacle. Last year I stood behind a woman buying the tiniest pastel fondant fancy with 'fuck me' piped in the centre. 'It's for my boss,' she explained.

· 22 Cornwall Road, London, SE1, 020 7261 0456; The Gherkin, 30 St Mary Axe, London EC3, 0845 262 3030
konditorandcook.com

Dark Sugar

Fatou Mendy started 20 years ago as an apprentice in the kitchens of the Ritz hotel in London, then on to the Ivy, Le Caprice and Quaglino's before starting up her own cake bakery and chocolate kitchen. From a stall in Borough Market she sells freshly made stuff like her Jaffa cake, an orange cake sandwiched with marmalade and covered in melted bitter chocolate; a Tia Maria, chocolate and coffee mousse cake and a white chocolate and Bacardi cake alongside a big selection of great chocolate truffles. You can even have them as wedding cakes if you lust for something creamy on the big day.

· Available from Borough Market, London SE1 (Thursday - Saturday), or call 020 8558 5614 for stockists.

Ottolenghi

A dazzling mini-chain full of brazenly flavoured cakes, tarts and biscuits, founded by chef Yotam Ottolenghi. Do I say this because I helped with their bakery? No, I really tried to leave them off this list. But they belong here for being extraordinary without resorting to the chemical fakery those French patisseries are riddled with. Square almond butter-cakes baked with ripe dark plums, so the juice from the cut flesh soaks back inside to form a natural glaze. Double-baked chocolate mousse cake, from the tarte-tatin school of glorious mistakes, has a crisp sugary crust running through the core. Exceptional.

· 63 Ledbury Road, London W11, 020 7727 1121; 287 Upper St, London N1, 020 7288 1454
ottolenghi.co.uk

Tom's Cakes

Tom Dolby is the pastry chef most stirred by the season's harvest, starting with the early candy-pink rhubarb through to that last fuzzy yellow quince. It's an approach common in chefs but sadly lacking in most bakers, who prefer the imported tin to the local field. If the baker doesn't care for the neighbouring farmer, can they really expect the community to support what they do?

This summer saw a butter cake scented with lavender from Norfolk, a few purple blossoms scattered in the mixture and the rest simmered with sugar and lemon juice to make a glossy pink syrup to spoon over once baked. A gem.

· Unit 3-4, West Newland Industrial Estate, Somersham, Cambridgeshire, 01487 842200; also available from Huntingdon, St Ives, Ely and Cambridge Farmers Markets; call for dates.

Slattery's

Starting as an apprentice at his parents' baker's shop, opened 40 years ago on the outskirts of Manchester, John Slattery had this dream site the bakery now occupies in his mind for years. A former pub - perfect for a bakery now daytime drinking is a bit past it - has been restored to its Edwardian splendour and houses an excellent patisserie, cookery school and dining room. His cakes are on the traditional side, but the ingredients are top notch, which is a modern approach in itself. Wedding and celebration cakes are his speciality, especially if they involve oodles of good chocolate.

· 197 Bury New Road, Whitefield, Manchester, 0161 767 9303
slattery.co.uk

Betty's Craft Bakery

All bakeries have their ups and downs. Betty's of Harrogate is currently up and proud. When the bakery was first started early in the 1900s it was inspired by an Edwardian ideal of excellence, and today that has been polished and refined. It has a strong whiff of brand management about it but it's done well. Packaging is pretty and frilly, the stores are bright and pert, and of course everyone wants to get their mitts on Betty's fat rascals (rock cakes with fruit and spices). The sloe gin fruitcake is extra moist, the light parkin made with oatmeal and golden syrup. A bakery to be proud of.

· Available at Betty's Tea Rooms, 1 Parliament Street, Harrogate, Yorkshire, 01423 877300
bettys.co.uk

Cafe Royal Bakery

Chef Murray Rhind founded the Café Royal Bakery nearly seven years ago and supplies the company's main delicatessen and café in the centre of Newcastle. His New York-style baked cheesecake is excellent, as well as the many tray bakes for the lunch box and the big elaborate cream-filled numbers. Layers of crisply baked all-butter puff pastry are layered with raspberries and jam, with an Austrian bee-sting mixture of flaked almonds, vanilla, cream and sugar slathered on top. His rich chocolate cake has a hazelnut truffle filling over an almond base, with a soft chocolate ganache poured over the top.

· Available from The Café Royal, 8 Nelson Street, Newcastle, 0191 231 3000
sjf.co.uk

The Tearoom at Inshriach Alpine Nursery

It's rare that a tearoom lives up to expectations. I tend to avoid anything labelled 'farmhouse' or 'traditional', those two words typically are used to sell nasty, mean cooking. This one inspired me, run by Gunn Borrowman and her husband, and tucked away among the potplants like Skye Gyngell at Petersham Nurseries. It's packed all the year round (open seven days a week, unbelievably), a bit of a secret treasured by the locals where every cake is honestly made without shortcuts. Try the pear cake with macadamia nuts, a gluten-free raspberry and rhubarb cake and salty crushed peanuts simmered in a rich caramel and drizzled through moist chocolate cake mixed with milk and bitter chocolate melted together.

· Inshriach Alpine Nursery, Aviemore, Inverness-shire , 01540 651287
drakesalpines.com

Falko

The German magazine Stern described this award-winning bakery as one of the few good stories about Germany in a British press normally filled with brown images of sauerkraut and Nazis. Observer Food Monthly award-winners Falko Burkert, the baker at Edinburgh bakery Falko, and partner Robert Linton combine a farmers' market stall with two retail stores to showcase the best Austrian and German baking, like their sterling sachertort stripped back to the original Konditorei Demel recipe, rich with bitter chocolate and almonds, and lightly coated rather than layered with apricot preserve. Look out for Falko's poppyseed cheesecake, with the seeds ground by hand to release the oil and flavour.

· 7 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh, 0131 656 0763; 1 Stanley Road, Gullane, East Lothian, 01620 843 168; also available at Edinburgh Farmers' Market
falko.co.uk

Siop Y Gornel

Christine Ashworth is the cake baker here at Siop Y Gornel, (pronounced seeop-a cornell) which means 'corner shop', and the bakery is a stage for everything good and proper in British baking. The bakery is run by her son Adam, who makes the handcut pork pies filled with trotter jelly, and his partner Feline who bakes all the breads. Perfect Bakewell tarts, rich with raspberry jam and ground almonds, and Dundee cakes, as well as a cake version of bara brith and a Celtic cider fruit loaf using Ralph's Old Badland Welsh Cider, from Presteigne, Powys. The fruit is soaked for a few days in hot cider then mixed with spices, flour and eggs, and keeps moist for 6 - 8 weeks if you hide it. Or a few days if you don't.

· Do you agree with Dan Lepard's choices? Read more from him and recommend your own favourite cake shops on our food blog

· 21 Tegid St, Bala, Gwynedd, Wales; 01678 520423