Cake is back in a big way and Barefoot Kitchen is leading the trend, becoming an overnight success when it opened a month ago in Jericho, on the site of former clothes shop Casa Rose whose name is still discernible on the awning above.

And it’s easy to see why. The pale blue shopfront entices you in with its steamy windows where people sit drinking delicious looking coffee and eating some truly splendid cake.

Others queue up to take a selection home, the pavement outside littered with people who don’t make it that far, chewing delicious croissants, meringues or brownies straight out of the paper bag, like hobos drinking Special Brew.

Chances are that you’ve already tried some of their wares, because Barefoot products are sold in restaurants throughout Oxfordshire from Oxfork and the Chester Arms in East Oxford to The Talkhouse in Stanton St John and Turl St Kitchen in central Oxford.

I queued up quite happily, the lengthy wait giving you enough time to peruse the enticing selection of cakes on offer. Having only intended to try a brownie I emerged 15 minutes later with half the shop, because it’s impossible to resist the Barefoot twist.

No ordinary brownies – choose from salted caramel which was so oozy you had to slide it out of its waxy wrapping with a knife, or the raspberry whose piquancy was the perfect foil for the rich chocolate.

An enormous slice of the double layered carrot cake, a piece of the banana bread – not just ordinary banana but pineapple and coconut all blended into one (which was a bit too dry for me, I prefer mine moist) and a heavenly frangipane slice which had only been out of the oven for an hour and was consumed dementedly outside the shop.

And as I nibbled away, I realised this inability to wait was also a way of ensuring no one else got a look in.

Sorry Mr Greedy but I gave in without a fight.

Barefoot Kitchen, 74A Walton Street, Jericho, Oxford.