These may be the only things worth queuing for in Melbourne, writes Larissa Dubecki.
If “cult” is an overused word in the world of food, it’s doubly so when it comes to the sweet stuff (Nutella-ball shake, anyone? Thought not.) Every so often, however, along comes a creation truly deserving of cult status. When it comes to Melbourne’s desserts, these beauties take the cake – and what’s more, they’re also begging to be taken home. Swipe right.
Read about Sydney’s cult sweets here.
Chocolate and berry lamington at Cobb Lane
Chocolate and berry lamington at Cobb Lane
The ginger and toffee balls run a close second, but the choc-berry lamington, a humble masterpiece of sponge filled with coconut butter cream and a strawberry jam ripple, and finished with dark chocolate and toasted coconut, wins line honours at pastry chef Matt Forbes’s Yarraville gaff. Fun fact: he’d never eaten a lamington before coming to Australia. It’s kind of ironic that it took an English lad to show what can be done with an Aussie classic, but in this case we’re willing to roll with it.
[Cobb Lane](/ Cobb Lane), 13 Anderson St, Yarraville, (03) 9687 1538
Photography by Peter Tarasiuk.
Chocolate and berry lamington at Cobb Lane
Chocolate and berry lamington at Cobb Lane
The ginger and toffee balls run a close second, but the choc-berry lamington, a humble masterpiece of sponge filled with coconut butter cream and a strawberry jam ripple, and finished with dark chocolate and toasted coconut, wins line honours at pastry chef Matt Forbes’s Yarraville gaff. Fun fact: he’d never eaten a lamington before coming to Australia. It’s kind of ironic that it took an English lad to show what can be done with an Aussie classic, but in this case we’re willing to roll with it.
[Cobb Lane](/ Cobb Lane), 13 Anderson St, Yarraville, (03) 9687 1538
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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Vanilla panna cotta tart at Dolcetti
Vanilla panna cotta tart at Dolcetti
Is it a spaceship? Is it a cake wearing a beret? Marianna DiBartolo has been making her cute Sicilian mash-up vanilla panna cotta tarts since she opened her West Melbourne pasticceria in 2010. Take one shortcrust pastry shell, add traditional vanilla panna cotta, dust in a blanket of snow sugar and style with a vanilla bean sticking jauntily out the top. Consume, repeat.
[Dolcetti](/ Dolcetti), 233 Victoria St, West Melbourne, (03) 9328 1688
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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Vanilla panna cotta tart at Dolcetti
Vanilla panna cotta tart at Dolcetti
Is it a spaceship? Is it a cake wearing a beret? Marianna DiBartolo has been making her cute Sicilian mash-up vanilla panna cotta tarts since she opened her West Melbourne pasticceria in 2010. Take one shortcrust pastry shell, add traditional vanilla panna cotta, dust in a blanket of snow sugar and style with a vanilla bean sticking jauntily out the top. Consume, repeat.
[Dolcetti](/ Dolcetti), 233 Victoria St, West Melbourne, (03) 9328 1688
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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Lebanese pastries at Balha’s Pastry
Lebanese pastries at Balha’s Pastry
Tarik Afiouni opened his Sydney Road “pastry restaurant” 25 years ago. Customers are still being tutored in the delightful ways of sticky-finger Levantine sweets, including tray upon tray of honey-sweet baklava and the puff pastry strudel-esque creation known as fatira, stuffed with finely chopped walnuts and scented delicately with orange blossom water.
[Balha’s Pastry](/ Balha’s Pastry), 761-763 Sydney Rd, Brunswick, (03) 9383 3944
_Photography by Peter Tarasiuk.
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Lebanese pastries at Balha’s Pastry
Lebanese pastries at Balha’s Pastry
Tarik Afiouni opened his Sydney Road “pastry restaurant” 25 years ago. Customers are still being tutored in the delightful ways of sticky-finger Levantine sweets, including tray upon tray of honey-sweet baklava and the puff pastry strudel-esque creation known as fatira, stuffed with finely chopped walnuts and scented delicately with orange blossom water.
[Balha’s Pastry](/ Balha’s Pastry), 761-763 Sydney Rd, Brunswick, (03) 9383 3944
_Photography by Peter Tarasiuk.
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Croissant at Lune Croissanterie
Croissant at Lune Croissanterie
Yes, yes, you’ve heard the hype (huge), you’ve seen the queues (lengthy), but have you actually tasted one of Kate Reid’s legendary croissants? Dubbed by kitchen goddess Rachel Khoo as the best outside of Paris, Reid makes a buttery, light, perfectly flaky croissant to her own recipe. They’re quite simply pastry perfection. And now at her fancy new backstreet Fitzroy warehouse digs, you can sit ringside at the “Lune Lab” to watch them being made, before tasting a three-course pastry flight, which is really taking croissants to a whole new galaxy.
[Lune Croissanterie](/ Lune Croissanterie), 119 Rose St, Fitzroy
Croissant at Lune Croissanterie
Croissant at Lune Croissanterie
Yes, yes, you’ve heard the hype (huge), you’ve seen the queues (lengthy), but have you actually tasted one of Kate Reid’s legendary croissants? Dubbed by kitchen goddess Rachel Khoo as the best outside of Paris, Reid makes a buttery, light, perfectly flaky croissant to her own recipe. They’re quite simply pastry perfection. And now at her fancy new backstreet Fitzroy warehouse digs, you can sit ringside at the “Lune Lab” to watch them being made, before tasting a three-course pastry flight, which is really taking croissants to a whole new galaxy.
[Lune Croissanterie](/ Lune Croissanterie), 119 Rose St, Fitzroy
Doughnuts
Doughnuts
They’re kind of a hot topic right now, but are doughnuts really worth the hype? Not if you’re talking about [insert big-name American chain import here], but if you pause to consider Baker D Chirico’s sugar-dusted, vanilla custard-filled bomboloni – well, the answer is most certainly yes. And if you add the salted caramel doughnuts at Tivoli Road (pictured), then it’s doubly so. But even in the midst of all this new-school doughnut love, sometimes it’s good to pay homage to the place that started many of us on the road to fried dough obsession: the American Doughnut Kitchen’s hot jam doughnuts, served out of their van at the Queen Vic Market. Just be careful not to burn your fingers.
[Baker D. Chirico](/ Baker D. Chirico), 149 Fitzroy St, St Kilda, (03) 9534 3777; or 178 Faraday St, Carlton, (03) 9349 3445
[Tivoli Road Bakery](/ Tivoli Road Bakery), 3 Tivoli Rd, South Yarra, (03) 9041 4345
[American Doughnut Kitchen](/ American Doughnut Kitchen), Queen Victoria Market, 0432 763 741
Ice-cream sandwich at Bibelot
Ice-cream sandwich at Bibelot
The vital information about Bibelot is contained in two words: chocolate tap. There are two of them (chocolate taps, that is) waiting to pour molten chocolate over your ice-cream at this South Melbourne offshoot of popular café Chez Dre. There’s really no better candidate than their ice-cream sandwich made with a house-baked brioche bun and strawberry gelato (or any gelato flavor you like) – the only question is, milk chocolate or dark?
[Bibelot](/ Bibelot), 285-287 Coventry St, South Melbourne, (03) 9690 2688
Chocolate cake at Babka
Chocolate cake at Babka
In a world of Frankenfood dessert mash-ups all gurning for their Instagram hit, sometimes it’s the simple things that stand out – such as a wedge of chocolate cake so moist you can’t avoid using the word “moist”, encased in a glistening shell of chocolate ganache, and with its only accoutrement a dollop of thick cream. Babka’s Sasha Lewis, who has been baking this baby for more than 20 years, attributes her cake’s brilliance to Belgian Callebaut chocolate and “all the good things – eggs, and butter and cream… and the fact I bake it in a small tin. If you try to go too big with a cake like this, it dries out.” Amen to that.
Babka, 358 Brunswick St, Fitzroy, (03) 9416 0091
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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Chocolate cake at Babka
Chocolate cake at Babka
In a world of Frankenfood dessert mash-ups all gurning for their Instagram hit, sometimes it’s the simple things that stand out – such as a wedge of chocolate cake so moist you can’t avoid using the word “moist”, encased in a glistening shell of chocolate ganache, and with its only accoutrement a dollop of thick cream. Babka’s Sasha Lewis, who has been baking this baby for more than 20 years, attributes her cake’s brilliance to Belgian Callebaut chocolate and “all the good things – eggs, and butter and cream… and the fact I bake it in a small tin. If you try to go too big with a cake like this, it dries out.” Amen to that.
Babka, 358 Brunswick St, Fitzroy, (03) 9416 0091
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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Cannoli at Rosa’s Kitchen and Canteen
Cannoli at Rosa’s Kitchen and Canteen
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. Sicilian-born Rosa Mitchell’s cannoli inspire Godfather-like devotion among the crowds that flock to her laneway Kitchen or the fancier legal district Canteen for her homely and utterly satisfying brand of cucina povera. And this is why: light-as-a-feather sweet, crisp pastry shells, filled with light-as-a-feather cream, dusted in crushed pistachios. It’s an offer to good to refuse. Get in fast, because they run out with annoying regularity.
[Rosa’s Kitchen](/ Rosa’s Kitchen), 22 Punch La, Melbourne; (03) 9662 2883, and [Rosa’s Canteen](/ Rosa’s Canteen), 1 Thompson St (cnr Little Bourke St), Melbourne; (03) 9602 5491
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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Cannoli at Rosa’s Kitchen and Canteen
Cannoli at Rosa’s Kitchen and Canteen
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. Sicilian-born Rosa Mitchell’s cannoli inspire Godfather-like devotion among the crowds that flock to her laneway Kitchen or the fancier legal district Canteen for her homely and utterly satisfying brand of cucina povera. And this is why: light-as-a-feather sweet, crisp pastry shells, filled with light-as-a-feather cream, dusted in crushed pistachios. It’s an offer to good to refuse. Get in fast, because they run out with annoying regularity.
[Rosa’s Kitchen](/ Rosa’s Kitchen), 22 Punch La, Melbourne; (03) 9662 2883, and [Rosa’s Canteen](/ Rosa’s Canteen), 1 Thompson St (cnr Little Bourke St), Melbourne; (03) 9602 5491
__Photography by Peter Tarasiuk._
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