First Look: Follow the Heavenly Smell to Blessed Fruit Pies, North Sydney’s Newest Bakery

Miller Street feels like an appropriate location for a baker who works with hundreds of grams of flour every day. Rose, co-owner of Blessed Fruit Pies, who prefers to go by her first name, rises at 4.30am six days a week to make shortcrust pastry from flour and Pepe Saya butter. “I love to make my pies individually,” she says. “It’s not easy, but making them fresh every day is important to me.”

Rose first opened Blessed Fruit Pies in 2024, in a tiny shop in Castle Cove, with her husband David. “Everybody would call it a little heaven,” he says. “The place smelled so delicious.”

Outgrowing their little paradise, the couple found their new North Sydney spot – with a bigger on-site kitchen and a steady stream of hungry office workers to feed. The new bakery has two entrances; one from Greenwood Plaza’s busy thoroughfare, the other into a little courtyard on Miller Street where you can see directly into Rose’s homely baking space.

The self-taught cook makes almost everything by hand, leaning on an industrial dough sheeter to help her create even layers of pastry. “You can do this by hand, but when you make 100 or 200 pies a day, that’s a different story,” says David, who prides himself on supporting his wife’s passion. 

Rose says her love of baking stems back to being a teenager, cooking with her mother in Iran. “I was always at home with my mum, baking and cooking. It’s inside me.”

She makes all her pastries with as little sugar as possible, so people can taste the fruit.

The fruit in question rotates with the seasons, but on Broadsheet’s visit there are thick slices of brown-sugar-crusted blueberry pie and juicy individual sour cherry pies with crimson-red fruit bubbled up to the crust. There are also chocolate and cinnamon babka loaves, apple crumble tarts, baklava and warm savoury options, including chicken and leek, and beef pies.

Persian spices are included in every bake. “Persian food has lots of spice, and I try to use similar things in my pies,” she says. “For example, I use cardamom in my blueberry pie.”

At Blessed, each pie is served on a silver platter with petite cutlery. Rose’s aren’t the flaky kind, crumbling at the first bite. No, these pies have structural integrity – and the firm crust is the perfect vessel for transporting the rich fruit, or lightly shredded chicken and carrot.

The best possible way to experience them is at one of the timber tables inside, or in the courtyard, with a traditional Persian drink – maybe a fruity soda, or a Turkish coffee made the traditional way, in heated sand. David’s favourite is the cucumber and mint soda made with sekanjabin, a delicately sweet Persian syrup made with vinegar.

“It’s a traditional drink in Iran, something people have when it’s very hot,” he says. “The combination is very refreshing.”

The couple moved to Australia more than three decades ago. One of their businesses was a dry cleaning and laundry shop in Castle Cove. When Rose’s friends and family encouraged her to take her love of baking to a professional level, David was all in – selling the business to set up Blessed. The name was his idea, honouring Rose’s gift in the kitchen.

“It’s a blessing to her from the universe,” says David. “We believe that if you put love into something, it reflects in whatever you create, make or bake.”

Blessed Fruit Pies
103 Miller Street, North Sydney

Hours:
Mon to Fri 8am–3.30pm
Sat 8am–midday

blessedfruitpies.com.au
@blessedfruitpies