Na koláče patisserie, Námestie Andreja Hlinku 1, Bratislava-Rača
Daniela started baking for the neighbours. First walnut crescents at Christmas, then cakes for confirmations and eightieth birthdays. In a flat on Pekná cesta she had two ovens, one fridge and a list of orders on sticky notes stuck to its door.
One December the number of orders overtook the number of days in the month, and it was clear this could not go on. In 2021 we opened at Námestie Andreja Hlinku 1, fifty metres from the tram stop, in a unit that used to be a fabric shop.
The first year was one long lesson. We learned that Rača buys its pastries on Sunday afternoons, that honey cake sells all year and not just in autumn, and that a cream cake in a summer shop window is fit for the bin within the hour. So we stopped putting it there.
Today we are a team of a few people. Daniela still signs off every recipe, and the rule still stands: if we would not enjoy making it, we do not sell it. Which is why you will not find a few things here that would certainly sell – edible-paper photo cakes, for one.
These are not slogans for a noticeboard. They are four things we make decisions on every day.
Butter, eggs, cream, mascarpone, Belgian chocolate, seasonal fruit. Substitutions always show up on the palate, so we avoid them.
Our creams are less sweet than most. Sweetness should come from the fruit and the chocolate, not from syrup. Some people miss it at first. Not by the second pastry.
We would rather turn an order down than rush it. If we say Saturday is full, it is full – that is not a negotiating tactic.
Our coffee comes from a roastery in Vajnory, our summer fruit from growers below the Little Carpathians. That is not marketing – it is simply closer and fresher.
At six in the morning the big oven goes on, along with a twenty-litre bowl mixer. Our eggs come from a farm below the Little Carpathians and we crack them by hand, one at a time – partly because that is the only way you catch the bad one. Butter is tempered to 18 °C; any colder and the cream splits, and nothing will save it.
Our chocolate is Belgian – 54.5 % cocoa solids for ganache, white for the cheesecakes. Our vanilla comes from pods, not from essence, and five years on people still tell us they can taste the difference. In summer we buy fruit at the markets; in winter we work with pears, oranges and frozen raspberries, and we do not pretend to have fresh strawberries in January.
Daniela, head pastry chef
Team
Three people in the kitchen, two behind the counter. Ring in the afternoon and there is a good chance Daniela picks up herself – with flour on her hands.
Seventeen years in pastry, the last six under her own name in Rača. She decides the recipes, runs the wedding tastings, and still makes every buttercream herself — she insists it cannot be timed by the clock, only judged by how the cream looks under the whisk. She also answers the phone, so if you call 0948 128 000, chances are you are talking to her.
He handles tiered cakes, fondant covering and hand-modelled figures. A single fondant peony takes him forty minutes and he will not let it go until the petal edges curve correctly. He also builds the internal structure — dowels, boards, supports — and he is the one who will tell you that the cake you found on Pinterest was made of polystyrene.
She fires up the oven at six in the morning and has the display case finished by eleven, when we open. Cream slices, yoghurt bars, cheesecakes, tartlets and strudels are all her handwriting. She still stretches strudel dough by hand over a cloth, because she maintains that machine-rolled dough behaves differently in the oven — and anyone who has compared the two agrees with her.
She runs the order calendar, guards the 48-hour lead time and decides what can physically be made on any given day. She builds the savoury platters and filled sandwiches herself and drives orders around Rača and Bratislava — tiered cakes always flat in the boot, never on a seat. If an invoice or a booking confirmation lands in your inbox, she sent it.
Reviews
Most of our customers live within a ten-minute walk of the shop. We listen to complaints as carefully as to compliments.
A two-tier cake for 70 guests, vanilla sponge with raspberries and buttercream. At the tasting Daniela told us straight that she would not put whipped cream in a July wedding cake, and she was right — the hall was over thirty degrees and the cake stood there for five hours without flinching. She drove it over herself and assembled it on site.
I ordered a digger cake for a fourth birthday. My son wanted it dark blue; they explained that every child would end up with a blue tongue and suggested a lighter cake with a blue digger on top. It worked. The digger sat on a shelf at home for another month afterwards.
We took 60 banquet pieces and two savoury platters for a company breakfast. The quality is not up for debate — the open sandwiches were fresh, not dried out at the edges the way they usually are. One minus: slots go fast. In December we called too late and had to take whatever was left. Next time I book earlier.
I stop for desserts every other Friday on my way home through Rača. Their American cream slice has that torched meringue top nobody else bothers with properly. Once I came at half past eight and the case was already half empty, so now I ring ahead and have them set something aside.
My daughter has coeliac disease, so her birthday cake was always a headache. Here they told me up front that the kitchen is not a certified gluten-free facility, so I knew what I was getting into. I appreciated the honesty more than any promise. The almond sponge with raspberries was eaten by all the other kids too, and nobody said anything was missing.
We were opening a new branch and I needed 120 tartlets for 5 p.m. They arrived at four, boxed, in paper cases so they would not stick together. The invoice came by email without me having to chase it three times. In Bratislava that is not a given.
I ordered apple and poppy-seed strudel for my in-laws’ visit. The apple one was made with tart apples, exactly as it should be, not that sweet supermarket boredom. My mother-in-law asked for the recipe, which has not happened in twenty years.
We arrived at the tasting with a picture of a five-tier cake and left with two tiers and two trays of banquet sweets. We saved nearly two hundred euros and in the end everything was eaten down to the last piece. I respect that they sold us what we needed instead of what we asked for.
