Savour the ‘unbeatable tongue-twang’ of fresh fruit pies at this nostalgic bakery cafe

When I was growing up, my family’s holiday car trips traversed New Zealand’s North Island, visiting countless farming relatives across the rolling pastures after stopping to eat a particular family-size blackberry pie available in a bakery in the town of Rotorua.

I can still remember the jangly, not-too-sweet tang of dark crimson fruit inside its pastry edges, staining my fingers and mouth as I held a slice in the back seat. That memory came rushing back at Blessed Fruit Pies, a new bakery wedged elegantly into the centre of North Sydney’s business district.

Run by husband-and-wife team David and Rose (who prefer not to use their surnames), a key feature of the fruit pies here is the intense fruit flavour highlighted by the low level of sugar used in the filling.

There’s an unbeatable tongue-twang biting into Rose’s stewed sour cherry, blackberry, blueberry and mixed berry pies. Fragrant with cinnamon or cardamom, and glowing with the hue of rubies or sapphires, these pies, baked fresh each morning, are about the taste of fruit, something often masked by the sugariness of dessert pies, cakes, tarts and cookies sold elsewhere.

But Rose is also a cook with beguiling pastry skills. Using no shortening, but plenty of Pepe Saya butter, each casing is softly firm and beautifully yielding and melty, whether you’re tackling a slice or a complete pie. As I dig into slices of the sour cherry and blackberry – juicy, beautifully sharp, glistening – people are standing before the shop’s central pie counter display like children looking at Christmas presents under a tree.

Today, their eyes peruse triangular blueberry and date scones (nicely dense, not heavy or too crumbly), round medium-size blackberry, sour cherry, blueberry, apple crumble and mixed berry pies. There are family size pies – cherry, sour cherry, apple and apple crumble – cut into slices.

At the front is a mini tower of golden palm-size date and walnut pies (intense, rich, naturally sweet) and, at the back, a platter of cinnamon and chocolate babka, one of the most popular baked goods on sale here. Another cabinet carries savoury beef, chicken and vegetable pies.

A steady stream of office workers file in from the adjacent arcade, pointing at favourite pies before rolling up shirt-sleeves to eat from handmade copper trays imported from Iran, each set with a paper-cut doily and a cake fork.

Some accompany their treats with cups of traditional Turkish coffee but, because mugginess still soaks the city, the most popular drinks are tall glasses of ice-cold ginseng and saffron or Persian cucumber and mint. I drink the latter, a tower of chopped cucumber and mint in soda sweetened with vinegar-based Persian syrup sekanjabin, similar to a shrub syrup.

David says Rose, who became a passionate cook as a teenager, had dreamt about having her own baking shop. After encouragement from David and the pair’s daughter, they opened Blessed Fruit Pies – named after David’s description of Rose’s baking prowess – in Castle Cove, followed by pop-up stores at Birkenhead Point and Broadway shopping centres.

The popularity of their pies there meant more space was needed, specifically a bigger kitchen. In February, they opened in North Sydney. David, a longtime professional handyman, did the outfitting. Rose’s kitchen, an enticing space with myriad cooking equipment and utensils on beautiful wood panels, fronting the street.

It’s a transportive experience sitting in this sweet-smelling, linen curtain-framed parcel of a bakery cafe with walls decorated with Iranian embroidered wall art and shelves of Iranian fig marmalade, sour cherry and orange blossom jams and Persian loose tea mixed with rose petals.

Both in the shop every day, Rose and David, who met in Iran 38 years ago and came to Australia in the 1990s, say they are passing on a passion for home-cooking. I’ll be going back again to relive my childhood.

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