The queen of cakes and bakes

Irish Examiner food columnist Michelle Darmody goes back to basics with her book on home baking.

SHE’S confident and self-assured — and why wouldn’t she be? Irish Examiner food columnist Michelle Darmody has created one of Dublin’s greatest café success stories.

Every PR in the know, every cool strand of Dublin frequents The Cake Café — yet it doesn’t feel austere or trendy. This is an eclectic, homely space, with its mismatched china, patterned table cloths and little outdoor seating oasis. Here, the ‘in crowd’ mixes with mums and toddlers, pensioners and passing shoppers. It’s how every café should be.

Michelle Darmody is successful, but she is utterly unassuming. She brushes each one of her (endless) rave reviews off modestly, the only glint of giddy excitement shining through when we mention her write-up in Vogue. Yes, even the fashion bible has given Cake the thumbs-up. “How much better does it get for a girl than that?” she smiles.

Of course, with a name like The Cake Café, it has to be all about the food — and it is, with a stunning all-day menu. Think home cooking with a twist. The beans on toast, for example, gives you that cosy, nostalgia-tinged feeling inside, yet it isn’t quite like mum used to serve. This version is made from scratch with sausage, tomato and cannellini beans — and it’s all yours for just €6.90. The food is all produced locally, with many suppliers hand-delivering their fruit and veg — the soup, for example, will only ever be seasonal.

The main event at Cake though is, of course, dessert. Lemon slices, brownies, scones and a host of other sweet treats set on cake stands are there to greet you as you step inside the café’s doors.

Again, the focus is on Irish baking — plain, simple and utterly divine. Cupcakes, Michelle says, may have had their day. In the book she has reverted to calling them buns, as we knew them when we were kids. There are no fussy French pastries either. This is honest-togoodness, back-to-basics baking.

Now, Michelle is giving her customers a chance to bring a little bit of Cake home, courtesy of her just published The Cake Café Bake Book. Not surprisingly, she’d been approached by high profile publishers — but decided to turn them down.

“They wanted pictures of me in an apron, photos of all the cakes — like Jamie or Nigella,” Michelle says. “But I’m not Nigella — I can’t compete, so why try?”

Never one to follow the rules, Michelle, originally from Carrigaline, Cork, decided she would self-publish, whatever it would take to write the book she really wanted to put her name to. Michelle called on Niall Sweeney and Nigel Truswell of Pony Design, already responsible for Cake’s unique logos. Between them, they have created something very different — a cook book illustrated entirely with graphics instead of photographs.

It also includes a workbook space where you can scribble your own recipes, or stick in clippings from newspapers and magazines — the idea is that everyone makes each book their own.

It was a gamble that paid off when international publishers Thames and Hudson came on board with a distribution deal that will see the EU-printed book sell next year in the UK and Australia.

It isn’t the first risk she’s taken. She’s already refused the temptation to franchise The Cake Café. She’s a successful businesswoman, but for Michelle, it’s all about lifestyle, quality of life. “When I opened The Cake Café, at first, life switched out of balance sharply — I had no business experience and I’m not the world’s best employee, so I decided to work for myself,” she says. “The first years were draining but it worked. It eventually became easier, though I am sure I tried my husband’s patience.

“I remember the tiler who did my floors when I was opening six years ago — he said, ‘what on earth are you doing, nobody will ever find the place’.” Today, her little café, tucked away in an environmentally designed building on Pleasant's Place, off Camden Street, employs nine people.

“There is no question it would be very tempting to put all my energy into work but at the end of the day it is time spent on other things that makes me a happy person and helps me be more creative in my life,” she says.

And Michelle is not short on creativity. She waited tables in restaurants in her native Cork and also in Dublin as she worked on her degree in art at Crawford College of Art and Design.

Then, food was a means to an end, but a year in Australia, where she was exposed to Sydney’s café culture, changed all that. She realised food was a passion. Meanwhile her art still came into play through her unique café design — and now her one-of-a-kind cook book.

Her love of food came, more than anywhere, from her father. His sudden death a decade ago changed Michelle’s life forever.

“His death made me realise how fragile life is and the essential need for equilibrium hit me full force,” she says.

Hence Michelle refuses franchises, writes her cookbook her own way.

“When writing this book,” she says in her foreword, “I started to think about the work I do in the café and what matters to me most in my day to day life. There are so many things — my husband (of course), my family, my friends, travel, my work, food, my writing, my city, my home, art. What is even more important to me than having these things in my life is trying to balance them all.

“I love living in Dublin and created a business to give myself a lifestyle I enjoy. In the Cake I get to chat to my customers, get to know their day to day lives, watch the children progress from christening cakes, to birthday cakes to after school cakes. In the past six years I hope that Cake has become a neighbourhood staple, a place that is embedded in the conscience of the customers, as much a part of the city as the Forty Foot or Busaras.”

Michelle Darmody has fulfilled what she hoped to achieve. Even Vogue agrees.

¦ The Cake Café Bake Book costs approximately €18 and is available from bookshops nationwide — or will be delivered straight to your door if you order from www.thecakecafe.ie

¦ Michelle has also produced a range of tea towels and aprons in 100% Irish linen. There is a map of Ireland, filled with interesting picnic locations and a map of Dublin hideaways. Michelle is also working on a map of her native Cork and hopes to complete one for other towns and cities.