At her tiny Preston Market bakery, Joy Jaune, pastry chef Joey Leung is turning out pretty, traditional bakes – eclairs, jellies and cakes –with seasonal flavours and a few Hong Kong-inspired twists.

In the cabinet on the plywood counter, you’ll find jelly puddings topped with pomelo, mango and sago, slices of just-set Basque cheesecake, and a glass cake stand covering delicate choux-pastry swans. The eclairs are available on Fridays and Saturdays in flavours like caramelised hazelnut, and raspberry, yuzu and white chocolate.

Leung is a former marketing executive from Hong Kong who first emigrated to Melbourne to study patisserie at William Angliss. After a few years back home in Hong Kong – working in the pastry department at Twenty Six by Liberty, under then-head chef Bjoern Alexander – she moved back to Melbourne and, in 2018, helped set up the pastry department at the NGV Garden Restaurant.

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When she was furloughed in 2020, Leung briefly turned to baking banana bread for friends. “I realised this wasn’t going to keep me busy,” she tells Broadsheet. “There’s only so much banana bread one household can eat!” Around Mother’s Day, she started seeing Facebook call-outs from fellow Hong Kong expats for cake deliveries and thought, “I can do that.” She soon branched out and started offering other homey baked goods, like Hong Kong-style mooncakes, a Mid-Autumn Festival staple that garner huge waitlists months before the holiday. She got so many return customers that before long she decided to go all in and rent a commercial space.

Since November 2023, Leung has been ensconced in the compact Preston Market digs. It’s a bright, clean space with white tiles and a butter yellow Kitchen Aid mixer – the pastry chef’s pride and joy, and a nod to the business name (“jaune” is French for “yellow”).

Many of the her creations are assembled to order, so Leung has taken to putting up hand-drawn signs around the shop so visitors know what they’re in for. Recipe development is largely seasonal, guided by what’s available from fellow vendors. An excess of ripe blood plums recently led to a tart plum sorbet, trays of affordable summer mangos ended up in her sago-topped Hong Kong-style mango pudding, while an abundance of end-of-season strawberries last month inspired her strawberries-and-cream jelly.

Some of Leung’s favourite ingredients make surprise appearances on the menu in the form of ube-and-coconut profiteroles and a matcha Viennese sable biscuit. Joy Jaune, she says, operates according to a simple philosophy. “I just want to share what I like. I want my food to be real – to reflect me.”

Joy Jaune
Shop N28 Preston Market
30A The Centreway, Preston

Hours:
Wed to Sat 9am–3pm

@joyjaune