A ripple in time — Local Paddo

Imagine a cake the size of a go-kart wheel. Heavy to hold and not particularly exciting to look at, a hollow dome with a light bread-crust colour with little variation aside from a dusting of icing sugar and the occasional splodge of chocolate.

But inside it looks like a cave with a complex system of caverns and alleys, all of them layered with semi-molten chocolate. In your mouth those caverns and alleys turn into a textured, layered and lavishly chocolatey delight that somehow achieves the rare distinction of being simultaneously bready, brittle, doughy, gooey, crunchy and spongy.

I’m talking about the kugelhupf at Wellington Cake Shop on Bondi Rd. The bakery has been selling this version of kugelhupf since 1981, two years after it opened.

Although Wellington Cake Shop is now famous for bagels, poppyseed rolls, sour cherry strudels and other Hungarian sweets, back when it opened, it sold exactly what every other Australian bakery sold: finger buns and pies.

Leslie Brull, owner and baker, first met the kugelhupf recipe the same year. It was made by a gregarious pastry chef called Icuka Fleischer who worked at the bakery. She learned a trick from a famous Hungarian pastry chef and told Brull that it would sell, at least to her friends.

Kugelhupf wasn’t news for Brull. He comes from a dynasty of pastry chefs going back to his great grandpa, and did his apprenticeship at a renowned Budapest bakery named Jakfalvi. Kugelhupf is a common bakery item, albeit with different names and ingredients across Europe. It’s not unusual that Brull knows how to make a good one.

So, Brull and Mrs Fleischer gathered a team of taste testers and her kugelhupf was put to the test. “It was a very different taste. Everyone really liked it,” Brull says.

When I ask what he thought of the recipe after trying it the first time, he says, of course “I’m a chocolate lover, I was very happy, but the most important thing in the industry is to do it how the customers like it.”

Mrs Fleischer, through her friends and the eventual sales, was the victor and her recipe lives on.

“We try to always keep it the same,” says Brull. “It’s not easy, pastry is living. It never comes out 100% how you like it, it’s always a challenge. Even this last week I did everything the same way and it didn’t turn out how I like it. It’s an everyday challenge to keep the quality.”

Mrs Fleischer isn’t alive to receive Brull’s thanks anymore, but he tells me the recipe helped make his business what it is today. We can’t tell you what that tip was or what the recipe is, that’s a secret. Mrs Fleischer told Brull not to tell anyone.

What about when you retire? I ask. “That is an open question,” he says.

Brull isn’t young anymore. He’s been baking for 60 years, his sideburns are grey but he still works through the night to make the next day’s pastries. We can’t say how long he’ll be at Wellington Cake Shop (he’s told me before that he’ll work until the day he dies) and he can’t say if any of his children will take over.

“I would never force them, they see how much work I put in. I don't want any unrealistic expectations. If they want to, then yes, if not, you know, you can't plan for the future. That is also an open question.”

Wellington Cake Shop

157 Bondi Rd