Halloween Bakery Near Me by Waterloo: Konditor's Cauldron Cakes and Zombies

Konditor opens its original bakery at 22 Cornwall Road at 7:30am on weekdays, 0.2 miles from Waterloo station, and its 2026 Halloween range makes it the most useful halloween bakery near me for anyone crossing the South Bank this month. A box of four royal-iced Gingerbread Zombies costs £18, six jam-filled Pumpkin Dodgers cost £18, and the showpiece Spooky Chocolate Cauldron Cake costs £96. Anything ordered online can be collected free from this shop.

The name is a job title. Gerhard Jenne grew up on a farm in Bahlingen, near Freiburg, trained first as a baker and then took a second two-year apprenticeship as a Konditor, a pastry chef, in Munich. After working for the Knightsbridge grocer Justin de Blank in the 1980s, he found a small bakery for sale on the corner of Cornwall Road in 1993 and opened Konditor there. The bakery says it caused an immediate sensation, and that first shop is still trading today.

A year later came the cake that defines the business. A regular asked for chocolate sponge with vanilla frosting, customers were puzzled by its plain white outside, and the bakers covered it in piped chocolate swirls. That became the Curly Whirly Cake. Konditor is now a family business run by Gerhard and his husband Paul, who handles day-to-day operations, and it describes itself proudly as gay-owned. Since 1994 it has baked a launch cake every year for the BFI Flare festival at BFI Southbank down the road.

The Halloween line went online on 24 September 2026, and every piece is baked in Konditor's own kitchens. The Gingerbread Zombies come four to a box for £18, spiced gingerbread figures with green-tinged royal icing faces. The Pumpkin Dodgers, also £18 for six, are crooked-faced shortbread biscuits sandwiched with smooth raspberry jam that shows through the carved eyes and mouth. Both travel well, which makes them the better buy if you are taking treats on a train or posting them.

For sharing, the Hocus Pocus Chocolate Brownie Slab costs £32. It is a deep chocolate chip brownie decorated with biscuits and a baked-in Hocus Pocus message, and the bakery suggests warming it in a cooling oven for a molten middle. A vegan and wheat-free version is sold at the same price. Spooky Mini Bakes, a box of nine small chocolate sponges with chocolate frosting, biscuits and sprinkles, costs £25 and is the easiest option for a classroom or an office desk.

The two centrepieces are where Konditor's pastry training shows. The Spooky Chocolate Cauldron Cake is the bakery's Chocolate Lover's Cake reshaped into a witch's cauldron, three layers of chocolate sponge in chocolate mascarpone and cream cheese frosting, spilling biscuits and sprinkles, for £96. The Spooky Pumpkin Pie, a six-inch pie of spiced pumpkin custard on a shortbread base topped with spooky biscuits, costs £36 and serves six. Our honest call is that the plain Pumpkin Pie at £32 tastes identical, so the extra £4 only buys decoration.

You can walk in and buy from the counter, but the Halloween range is sold through online and phone orders, so the reliable route is to order ahead. For next-day collection or London delivery, order before 2pm, and orders for a Monday must be in by 2pm on Saturday. Same-day London delivery is available if you order before midday, with drop-off between 1pm and 5pm. The online minimum spend is £10, collection is free at every shop, and staff will ask to see your order confirmation.

Online orders can be placed up to a month ahead, so booking the cauldron cake in mid-October and collecting it on the day of your party is the most dependable plan.

Cornwall Road keeps commuter hours: 7:30am to 7pm on weekdays, 8am to 6pm on Saturday and 10am to 5pm on Sunday. Early weekday mornings bring office workers from Waterloo collecting coffee and a slice, while Saturday is calmer and better for browsing the counter. If you arrive on a Sunday afternoon after the 5pm close, Konditor's London Bridge shop at 26 Joiner Street is two stops away on the Jubilee line and stays open until 7pm on Sunday and 7:30pm on weekdays.

The other two branches suit different trips. The Gray's Inn Road shop near Chancery Lane and the Cullum Street shop near Bank both close at weekends, so they are useful only for a weekday collection near the office. For a Halloween party on Saturday 31 October 2026, the safe choice is to collect from Cornwall Road or Joiner Street, since those are the two shops trading that weekend.

The Waterloo shop has been feeding the same neighbourhood for more than thirty years. Theatre is part of its history: the Old Vic and the Young Vic sit a short walk away on The Cut, and in 2001 Konditor took over the Young Vic's cafe. Today the counter serves commuters heading for Waterloo and parents ordering a personalised cake, since Konditor will pipe any message on any of its cakes. Know your order before you reach the glass, because weekday mornings run on commuter time.

Turn the corner from Cornwall Road and you reach Roupell Street, a row of early nineteenth-century workers' cottages so intact that it has stood in for old London in film and television. Walk north and the South Bank opens up within five minutes, with the BFI Southbank, the bakery's longest-standing partner, under Waterloo Bridge. On the other side of the station, the Leake Street tunnel is a legal graffiti wall whose painted surfaces change constantly, a fitting backdrop for a box of zombies.

Konditor Waterloo, 22 Cornwall Road, London SE1 8TW, about 0.2 miles from Waterloo station. Hours: Monday to Friday 7:30am to 7pm, Saturday 8am to 6pm, Sunday 10am to 5pm. Cakes can be personalised online, in store or over the phone, and gift cards work both online and in the shops for twelve months. Nationwide orders placed before 7am arrive the next day, though not every Halloween item ships beyond London.