Baked Collective is a calm cake oasis on a busy road in the ’burbs

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When Laura Capewell, owner and baker of Baked Collective, appears at the sliding door between her commercial kitchen and bakery cafe in southern Sydney, her fingers are daubed in red, pink, blue and yellow food colouring.

“Oh, always,” she says, looking at her fingernails. “It washes off finally, but then it all comes back again when I start more cakes.”

Capewell, who rebranded her blossoming cake-baking and designing business from Cakes By Cape, opened Baked Collective in November. Sitting in a cluster of shops beside The Boulevarde, a four-lane road with whooshing traffic, it’s an unexpectedly serene bolthole of refined and inventive baked treats.

More bakery than cafe, there are six tables, inside and out, to have a coffee, a cool drink or a cup of tea while munching on beautifully soft and light vanilla passion cupcakes, each one dolloped with whirled piped ridges of pearly buttercream, or a Biscoff slice, its deeply divine velvety, caramelly, cakey layers sprinkled with crumbled crunchy Belgian biscuit.

On this afternoon, school children sit along the bakery’s wooden banquette hoeing into vanilla fairy cupcakes, each topping a perfect ball of buttercream studded with hundreds and thousands.

Staff from nearby hospitals have walked over to sit on paper cord-woven wishbone chairs and dig spoons into “cake boxes” – round plastic containers filled with an ingenious mix of butter cream, cake offcuts from Capewell’s special orders, and her house-made raspberry jam.

Gently swirled together, they are a creamy, jammy, smooshy marvel, reminiscent of a more cakey Eton Mess, and entirely waste-conscious.

Capewell, whose interest in baking began as a child, makes every slice, cupcake, brownie, cookie or biscuit displayed in the bakery’s glass cabinets or on the counter.

There are fat gingerbread, M&M, and chocolate chip cookies (including a gluten-free version) under glass domes at the front counter and luscious Caramello and Oreo brownies the size of doorstops in the cabinet.

Pricing is simple, with cupcakes, slices and brownies all $5.50 each.

Out the back, Capewell works dawn to dusk and beyond, creating her in-demand cake designs to order, or preparing boxes and barrels of chunky NYC cookies or personalised sugar cookie biscuits for delivery across the country.

Surrounded by ovens, cooking benches and fridges, she is ever aware of the weather outside. Every iced creation is affected by temperature – hot more than cold – and changing humidity levels.

“There’s lots of science,” Capewell says. “I’ve got no qualifications in science, and I don’t think I really liked science in school, but it’s definitely coming out now.”

She watches over every elaborately iced cake, sometimes starting them again, whether it’s a heart-shaped variety piped in brilliant retro pinks, greens and yellows, a scalloped tower of brilliant red, blue and purple, or a gravity defying shaggy number.

In one fridge, a smooth iced pillar of cake, rising taller than a stovepipe hat, is adorned with pressed edible flowers resembling a growing spring garden. In another, a creamy cake with dark pink undulating waves of icing bears crimson glitter-covered cherries.

Capewell, who left a career as a flight attendant to turn her cake passions into a full-time business a year ago, is ever-curious about the possibilities of icing shapes, colours and piping varieties. “I have 200 piping tips,” she says. “It’s crazy.”

A big fan of the 6B piping tip, and exacting about her intricate icing work, Capewell also has more than 40 hues to colour the icing. “Cake designs have changed a huge amount in recent times,” she says. “When I first started, a lot of cakes were topped with chocolate, or drip cakes.

“Now it’s vintage and retro-style cakes that have taken off. The colours are bright and they’re more attractive to the eye.”

In 2024, Capewell is getting married and, while she will be making and designing her own wedding cake, its design is not yet confirmed.

“My fiance says it has to be extravagant,” she says. “So, we’ll see. It will be big. It will be stressful. But it will look great.”