Jen Lo knew her days working as a designer nine-to-five were numbered.
“I had an itch to make things with my hands and having baked since I was a teenager, it seemed like a good thing to do to while figuring out my next move,” she tells SBS. “Needless to say, it stuck and since then I’ve progressed my skills from caking to chocolate making.”
Once her design contract was up in 2015, she launched , a then e-commerce site dedicated to sating folks’ sweet hankerings. Lo’s Malaysian-Chinese background, plus time spent in Japan, the US, Australia and her birth country – England (her dad was a satellite engineer, meaning plenty of uprooting) has helped shape her diverse flavour wheel; a glance at Bakedown’s phenomenally popular Block O’ Choc range makes it clear she’s just as at home crafting confections with pandan and coconut, or yuzu and apple, as she is with Oreos.
Jen Lo launched Bakedown Cakery in 2015. Source: Alana Dimou
“Any time the pandan kueh or lychee konnyaku jelly came out, I took the opportunity to feed the Asian monster inside me,” Lo says. “Experiencing different cultures has given me a much more adventurous palette than I think I would have had otherwise.”
As far as cake flavours go (available in multi-tiered or cupcake size), there’s black sesame, lemon-lime-coconut, pandan and salted caramel, to name a handful.
Cake flavours range from black sesame to pandan and coconut raspberry. Source: Alana Dimou
Before opening the Bakedown Cakery shop in 2017 in Sydney’s St Leonards, online orders had to be made in minimum quantities, resulting in a limited range due to shelf life transport logistics.
“Now we’re really able to offer more in terms of a changing range of bonbons and limited edition products that you can walk in and pick from the shelves without the wait time or the worry of your chocolate melting in a van somewhere!”
Also in store is all the DIY ingredients and equipment you need to get your own bake/chocolatiering on. That includes a customised where you can personalise your block by uploading a selection of photographs for printing onto slabs of white chocolate - it really is the ultimate gift idea.
And, come Easter, folks can expect Bakedown’s ‘The Great Easter Egg Hunt’ and a bunch of fun workshops, too.
Tue - Fri, 10am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 12pm
62 Atchison St, St Leonards, NSW
