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Please note, Molly Bakes is now closed. Time Out Food editors, November 2017.
The heart-attack-in-a-cup that has taken Instagram by storm has its home in Dalston at a cute little coffee shop called Molly Bakes. If you have a family history of diabetes, this place is not for you. There’s a counter full of cupcakes, brownies and cookies, and not a savoury in sight, but it doesn’t matter because your first visit is always for the same reason: to order one particular monster dessert.
A freakshake is actually just a massive milkshake, albeit one topped with an insanely daunting pile of squirty cream, chocolate sauce, wafer sprinkles, Oreo chunks and a cookie/brownie topper. As frozen, sugary, milky drinks go, it’s a market leader: the shake itself is delicious. Chocolate is the most popular flavour, unsurprisingly; peanut butter brings a welcome saltiness to the equation; caramel is for those who use Sensodyne; and raspberry is, according to the waitress on my visit, ‘pink!’. The staff are as chirpy as you’d need to be to blend unnecessarily gluttonous drinks all day.
On a rainy Friday lunchtime, half the customers were locals dropping in for a coffee, so it’s not just about the gimmicks. But as good-looking, affordable and welcoming as Molly Bakes is, ultimately it’s all about the freak show.