Raya Is Melbourne's New Bakery Brightening Up Lockdown with Malaysian Sweet and Savoury Treats

When Raymond Tan got the keys to his soon-to-be CBD bakery in October last year, he never anticipated his cake shop creations would be delivered by hand from door to door around Melbourne as a result of a stage four lockdown.

Yet, this turn of events has led to weekly sell-outs for the accounting graduate-turned-baker. He has now been successfully trialling at-home kits packed with Malaysian-inspired sweet and savoury treats for over a month.

"The change has been good and bad," Tan told Concrete Playground. "I started as an at-home baker four or five years ago and it's always been a dream to have a bake shop in Melbourne."

With multiple 'care packs' on offer, selections include grazing boxes such as the 'afternoon tea kit' ($45) filled with a slice of unbelievably fluffy chiffon cake, giant crumbly matcha cookies and scones. For something bigger, the impressive 'Raya at home kit' ($60) showcases the bakery's flaky shortcrust pies, scones, pandan and Thai tea-flavoured cakes — plus, a sweet spinach and yoghurt cake, which is Tan's take on a popular Turkish vegetable dessert.

There's also kueh included in the kit. A sticky, gluttonous dessert popular in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, it's made with ingredients like peanut, kaya custard and coconut.

"In the 'Raya at home kit', people get to taste it all," explains Tan. "It's great when people try my kueh, inspired by my Malaysian background. They're tedious to make but I've had a chance to learn thanks to being in [isolation] and my store is one of the only places to buy them in Melbourne, so I get lots of orders from people missing home."

Julia Sansone

To drink, you'll find hojicha tea and matcha from Zen Wonders in North Melbourne, which are included with kits or available to add on. There's bottled black and milk coffee, too, brewed from the two coffee blends roasted by Tan's neighbour-turned-friend.

"Coffee is important, and luckily this coffee roaster [Come Back to Earth] lives right below my apartment, so we quickly became friends and developed these blends together," says Tan. "There's an O blend espresso coffee, inspired by the Malaysian kopi o, as well as a C blend, after kopi c, a coffee with sugar and milk."

For the foreseeable future, Raya is offering weekly deliveries within 20 kilometres of the CBD shop on Saturdays for preorders placed on its website by Wednesday midnight prior. Pickup is available for anyone within the five-kilometre radius of the bake shop.

"There's lots of changes that have happened and we are adapting weekly," says Tan. "We don't just offer kits but everything else on the menu can be delivered, including whole cakes to order. We're looking to continue rotating our specials as much as possible, too, so there's always something new to try."

Find Raya at Shop 2, 61 Little Collins Street, Melbourne. It's open for takeaway from 9am–3pm Thursday–Sunday and preorders via the website are open from 6pm Monday to midnight on Wednesday for delivery on Saturday from 10am–4pm.

Images: Julia Sansone