Food / June 30, 2022

Smartbear Cakery opens Dublin branch on Liffey Street

Food / June 30, 2022

Smartbear Cakery opens Dublin branch on Liffey Street

The shop will be open from Tuesday to Sunday from ten in the morning till half six.

Their cakes start at seven euros and they will also be selling coffee. The space offers cake by the slice as well as bake-to-order specials for birthdays and all occasions.

This week they’re also celebrating the opening by giving away a thirty euro voucher when you spend thirty quid in-store any time up to this Sunday 3 July.

Smartbear Cafe is an Artisan Japanese Bakery. Their first location opened on Bray Main Street a few years ago. According to their website, they make fresh cakes from ‘supreme grade ingredients’. These include Japanese imported matcha, free-range eggs and handmade sauces.

Crucially they don’t add any artificial colours or flavours. Which is highly unusual for a bakery. Their natural flavours range from matcha and mango to lychee rose and truffle chocolate.

They made their name in Bray through their Mille Crepe Cakes. This is a cake with a dozen layers of crepes. In between each layer is freshly-made cream, custard or sauces. Mille crêpes is a historically French cake made of many crêpe layers. The word mille means “a thousand”, implying the many layers of crêpe.

The modern mille crêpes cake was invented by Japanese pastry chef Emy Wada and has become a pillar of Japanese dessert cuisine. TikTok helped to popularise the cake type during the pandemic. Other options available at Smartbear Cakery include fresh whipped mousse, cheesecakes and jiggly Japanese sponges.

According to their website they ‘set out to adapt concepts, ultimately producing something familiar yet strange, and often much better’.

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