Melbourne's Most Creative Baker | Must Visit Cafes In Melbourne

Today we're taking you behind the scenes of Melbourne's most creative baker. If you love bread, cookies, cakes this is the video for you. This is Raymond Tan, baker extraordinaire. My mind is just blown because you went from an accounting student to owner of Raya Bakery and Dua Bakehouse, two amazing venues in Melbourne, like how? Work, work and very passionate about baking I suppose, yeah. You're self-taught? Yeah still, yeah still self-taught. I'm basically going to be his shadow today, I just want to talk to him, see where he gets his inspiration from, he is super creative, you should see the cakes that are on, and the bread that's on offer here. Let's head into the kitchen. Can we just dial back because you were studying accounting? Yeah I was doing my master's in accounting and I was working in retail actually so and I started baking just for fun, yeah, and then Instagram was very encouraging because back then I think that was when Instagram started like 10, 12 years ago, so I was just posting what I make every day at home pretty much and then it blew up. And it blew up in the sense that you were featured by Vogue, MoMA was reposting your stuff, like he blew up big. Dua is not your traditional bakery, you see influences from Asia all over the place. Ube, matcha, pandan, ramen, eggs, there's just so much inspiring stuff going on and delicious looking stuff. Where do you get your inspiration from? I think I'm doom scrolling online, videos like yours when you see like people travel, you know that could be fun in a bun, that could be nice in like a dessert, like yeah we just get in, I don't know when I see, sometimes it could be like a design of like a painting, I thought if this is like a pastry it'll be really cool and what would I put in it, the colours, you get inspiration from everywhere I think. I'm very easily stimulated. You moved from Malaysia to Melbourne in 2006. Yes, oh my god you did your research. And I heard, I heard that before you moved to Melbourne, you hadn't even turned on an oven before. No. Is that true? It was more like a dish drying rack for like, I think a good 10 years of my life in Melbourne, we used that as like a drying rack. I think most Asian people do. Yeah, that is very common. Because I think back home it's not common to have oven like in Malaysia, so we just wouldn't bake things, I think we have a microwave rather than like baking stuff on an oven. My housemate, my best friend, so his mom is an amazing baker, so I get like a taste of good cake at a very early age because she would make like the craziest birthday cakes for him and yeah everyone in school would just, I think that's why I started making baking cakes, yeah it's just like people just love when you bring something. Sponge, Panang creme patisserie and then the boysenberry jam and then the obviously the whipped cream and another layer of custard in the middle and then the marzipan. And this is ube cream? This is ube, yeah so it's ube pandesal bread and then there's a little ube paste in the middle, ube cream, yeah that's that. Oh my god, and then the shio pan with the egg salad. The shio pan, yeah it's like this is probably my favourite thing, so it's the cucumber and an egg salad and a ramen egg, yeah. Then the shumai sausage rolls. I love it, shumai sausage rolls. How many do you think you've eaten of these? I think since we put this on menu last year, I think I've had one almost every week. The princess cake which is an utter delight to look at, it reminds me of the Sicilian cassata and it's got marzipan on the top but it's pandan flavoured marzipan, it's pandan cream, sponge, there's jam in there, normal cream. It's light, it's airy, it's not too sweet, you can really taste that pandan flavour. It's a delight to look at, it's a delight to eat. Hey what an interesting, fun, inspiring life you lead. It's cool, it's great because you can tell you genuinely love it and you love seeing people eat your food right, that's what it's all about. So I think when I was baking so much on Instagram, I was like yeah it'll be good if people could try because when you make a wedding cake you don't get to see people eating it, usually it's done decorating and then you go and I think now it's like you get to get like real reviews from people and people think of your food. I could not order this, look at that ube pandesal. Pandesal is a Filipino bread, ube is herbal yam native to the Philippines. This has got, oh look at that, ube cream and ube paste, there's ube in the bread. It's like a cream bun, fluffy bread, beautiful earthy flavour, oh delicious. This is Raya Bakery which is Raymond's venue in Melbourne CBD and this is where we first fell in love with Raymond's food. You can check out the video in the link above but have a look at these. Cakes, pandan kaya toast cake, pandan chiffon cake, double sesame chiffon cake, mouth-watering stuff. Can we eat cake together? Yes of course. All right, do you want me to pick stuff? I think you should pick your two of your favourites. Oh my god, I'll pick something, I'll pick something, yeah. I said two of his favourites but he's going to pick some things. So we have everything pandan and kaya here. I feel like you know your audience very well because I'm pandan obsessed. I'm like yeah if you order this it's like a pandan platter. Okay so what have we got? So we start, we have ondeh ondeh and the kuehs are made fresh here every morning. These are for the dietary as well so like the gluten-free and they love this. My everyday cake, this is my go-to cake, the pandan chiffon. And then if you're after something more heavy and substantial than the kaya toast cake, probably these two are the most popular cakes that we make. And then recently we have a little special cookie which is a kaya toast cookie. So there's like a little, we repurpose the crumbs of the bread and then we made it into a cookie filled with a brown kaya that we make here. So it's crispy and like a toast-like cookie. This is the kaya toast cake, it is a work of art. Can you tell me through it? So it essentially is to recreate the experience of eating kaya toast. Usually we have it with coffee and tea so it's butter pound cake with the coffee syrup and then extremely salty buttercream with sea salt. And then we have a layer, a couple of layers of the pandan kaya that we make and then the crouton that's crushed up in between so you get little bits of bread like the textures. Oh my gosh, okay I'm gonna try. I haven't had this in a while too. Let me QC this. I think I made this yesterday myself. It's beautiful. The coffee really comes out. A little crispy. Oh that's good. It's rich though eh? Like it's really, the butter pound cake is like really buttery and rich. It's beautiful. Yeah. Like what inspires you? What's the creative process? So literally everything. I think at the moment it's um yeah it's just from every sometimes when I look at like a building outside that would be really cool and I could see it in like a flavor combination. Wow. Which is crazy, the vision and then yeah and then a lot of the times it's like things that I've seen online that's trendy and I said how could I put my twist on it? Like a kaya toast. I was like it could be nice in a cookie, in like a cake form and then I saw a baker in the UK making toast cookies. Oh we could make that into a kaya toast cookie. Just a little riff just to yeah play around with what doesn't have to be totally original but just put your spin on it yeah. Home bakers. Yes. Now get to learn a few of your tips and tricks because you just travel the world. Well no, I was going to say you published a cookbook. Oh yes I did, I did. So that was um yeah I contributed to the Australian Baker's Book and then I got a book deal for myself to that. Congratulations. It just came out this week. Yeah that's huge. That's huge. I should have brought it. I think it's in the bag. Thank you so much for having us. Anytime really yeah. It has been such a fabulous morning. Get to Raya Bakery or come to Raya Bakery. Get to do a bakehouse and experience Raymond's genius. The food is nostalgic, fun, whimsical, delicious. It's all of the things you want in an eating experience. Seriously, eat here now.