Since opening in 2020, Sucre du Jour has built its reputation on technical French desserts that incorporate Southeast and East Asian flavours. The Camberwell patisserie’s cabinet is always filled with treats such as matcha canelés, Ipoh white coffee-flavoured opera cakes and croissants filled with pandan cream.

Before opening in Camberwell, founders Josephin Tan and Eigen Ting hoped to open a patisserie in the city. But the Melbourne real estate market had other ideas. Last year, they finally found the right space, and last weekend opened a new store on Spencer Street.

All the goods for the CBD store are currently made at the Camberwell shop – though the team hopes to find a production kitchen in the city soon. Ting is a former L’Hotel Gitan pastry chef who also did a stint in Singapore at the famed Raffles Hotel; additionally, he worked under the late French chef Joël Robuchon at his eponymous restaurant in the same city. He makes the same croissants, danishes, macarons and other sweets across both locations. But, Ting says, with the new store comes a new focus on expanding the cake selection – headlined by the petit gateaux.

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“Petit gateaux are like fine gems. They are a luxury treat considering their size and elegance,” Ting says. There are around eight of the highly technical small cakes on offer at any one time. While most change seasonally, two mainstays have been around since day one: the macadamia and cereal tart, and the limon (a pastry shell filled with candied lemon marmalade, yuzu curd and whipped lime Chantilly).

The latest creation is a riff on a Mont Blanc, which sees an almond sponge layered with chestnut cream, and topped with a citrussy oolong tea mousse that hides a layer of caramel.

Ting says his current favourite is a take on onde-onde, a Malaysian kueh that resembles a small dumpling made with a pandan-flavoured glutinous rice-flour wrapper and a gula melaka (a type of palm sugar) filling. Here, onde-onde takes the form of a petit gateau with pandan chiffon, gula melaka coulis, dulce cream, a coconut and pandan mousse and puffed rice.

“Being Malaysian, there’s a certain kind of balance that we like in our desserts,” says Ting. “I think that really started to translate through [Sucre du Jour’s] desserts.”

Wanting to avoid the ubiquitous industrial fit-out found in many bakeries, Ting and Tan referenced the avant-garde feel at Nudake – a basement cafe in Gentle Monster’s flagship store in Seoul – and high-end patisseries in Europe such as La Patisserie du Meurice par Cedric Grolet in Paris. There’s a stone countertop, a high curved ceiling embossed with the patisserie’s name, and soft French-washed walls meant to resemble watercolours.

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