Dreamtime Bakehouse
THE Dreamtime Bakehouse gives a native bite to an old European treat. Owners Angie Perry-Mansell and her husband Joseph Hill use local flavours in their chimney cakes. “We’ve completely flipped it to the Australian native flavours,” Ms Perry-Mansell said.
The couple have created a menu sure to please, including flavours like lilly pilly with macadamia nuts, wild desert peach with roasted wattle seed and Kakadu plum with cashew nuts.
However, Ms Perry-Mansell said there was one clear crowd favourite.
“The most popular is the Longreach lime with pistachio nuts. The vibrant citrus against the saltiness of the pistachio… it’s a flavour explosion like no other,” she said.
To make the cakes, Ms Perry-Mansell and her husband wrap the dough around large wooden rollers - giving the chimney cake its iconic slinky-like form – and hand cook them over hot coals.
Ms Perry-Mansell said they found the inspiration for their business when travelling in Prague, where the chimney cake is a traditional winter favourite.
“We saw these cakes, had a taste and
thought ‘wow these are pretty amazing, I think we could adapt this and use it with our damper to come up with our own Australian chimney cake’,” she said.
The cakes get their name from the steam that bellows out against the cold European weather when they are cooked, creating a chimney-like effect.
While Darwin’s dry season is far from a Czech winter, Ms Perry-Mansell believes the hot cakes suit a sea breeze just as well as they do an icy European wind.
“Sea breeze, music, the smell of the roasting chimney cakes over the fire…it’s a good vibe,” she said.
You can find the Dreamtime Bakehouse at the Esplanade, where they set up rugs and “vibrant indigenous cushions” for people to sit and enjoy their chimney cake of choice.
Looking to the future, the Dreamtime Bakery hopes to venture into the world of food tours, offering two tasty adventures set to launch in August.
The ‘Pick and Peck’ tour is a collaborative experience, offering participants a 45 minute tour led by a Darwin local with a range of food samples from different local businesses.
The pair are also set to run a sunset food and cultural safari, a two hour tour of the Esplanade involving tasting plates, discussions about local hunting and gathering practices and food culture in Darwin.
Ms Perry-Mansell said the tours will intertwine food with local indigenous culture.