When she was working as a commis pastry chef at Supernormal, and as a pastry chef under Lucy Whitlow at Osteria Ilaria, Amanda Lowrensa was primarily focused on plated desserts. But the Le Cordon Bleu grad has always had a soft spot for French and European pastries and American cakes.

With Amande – the new bakery Lowrensa left her post at Osteria Ilaria to start – she’s now making tarts, tortas, cakes and other bakes.

Amande doesn’t have a bricks-and-mortar location yet, although that’s the goal. For now, Lowrensa is selling weekly cake boxes made up of four different bakes which are available to pick up on Saturday mornings from the commercial kitchen in North Melbourne where Lowrensa bakes everything for Amande.

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Each week there will be fewer than 30 boxes available to pre-order via a Google Form posted to Amande’s Instagram account and the offering will change every two weeks.

“Instead of being classic, I like to incorporate modern flavours or flavours that you don’t really find in classic cakes,” Lowrensa tells Broadsheet.

Last week’s debut offering included slices of Lowrensa’s “impossible cake” (a chocolate and dulce de leche flan), baked Basque cheesecake, plum and hazelnut torta, and poached pear and rye frangipane tart. New cake box flavours will be announced on the bakery’s Instagram account and accompanied by delicate line illustrations by Lowrensa’s sister Nichol Elenna, who lives in Paris and works in the men’s design department at Louis Vuitton.

Lowrensa moved to Melbourne from Indonesia in 2015 to study business, only to fall in love with the city’s hospitality scene and eventually pursue a diplome de patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu Melbourne. She now hopes to grow her business, which will make its first market appearance on April 13 at Heide Market.

@amande_melb