The Crack is BACK (with luscious pies and cookies)!

Posted on 13 June, 2024

Canberra’s addiction to Crack Bakery apple pies is about to suffer a serious relapse when Crack reopens for orders from June 23!

All we can say is get those fingers primed at the keyboard as the online system has been known to crash in the past and these giant-sized, individually-prepared and lovingly hand-made apple pies (with custard) usually sell out within minutes.

Anna and Gina Petridis—who brought the cult food businesses of Pâtissez and Cartel to Canberra and Queanbeyan—are set to work their pastry magic once more after local pie lovers had to go cold turkey in 2021.

Each Crack apple pie weighs in between 1.5 and 2 kgs

Despite an insatiable demand for these loaded pies, the pressures of trying to cook them at home, and then in a small rented kitchen, took its toll and Anna turned her full focus to Cartel and the magical Mexican tacos it turns out.

But no one stopped nagging the duo about a return of Crack. And after a long search, mother and daughter are delighted to find a perfect-fit commercial kitchen on Amberly Avenue at Canberra Airport (near Fairbairn).

Anna and Gina Petridis unpacking in the new kitchen.

“It’s a great kitchen, big enough for us and with a cool room. So we are raring to go!” says Anna.

She puts the success of all their food ventures down to the fact that she and her mum love food, love to cook, and would only ever put things on the menu that they would want to eat themselves—from the famous freakshakes at Patissez to the crispy cheese-encrusted tacos at Cartel to apple pies that are so fat with ingredients you may need to remove shelves in your oven to make space to heat one up.

Hand made, hand cut, hand assembled pies…

“We only ever produce food we love to eat. That’s the secret sauce. I am a hard customer and I only want to eat things that are exceptional. Food is expensive and people are only happy to spend and to keep coming back if they truly love the product. You just can’t afford to be average.”

Not that anyone has ever said a Crack apple pie has ever been “average”.

“Our apple pie is the cartoon version of the apple pie,” explains Anna. You can also order “liquid crack” custard to go with.

Certainly, it is Crack’s core product with each pie serving 8-9 and prepared by Gina by hand. Every slice of apple is cut by her and every sheet of pastry is mixed and rolled by her.

It shows in the golden rustic folds of pastry and the firmness of the apple.

But when orders open, Canberrans will also be able to order a rhubarb pie, and a pumpkin pie and possibly a cherry pie.

Pumpkin pie anyone?

Anna is also going to be giving sugar-lovers a high with select cookies.

“We will be making crazy-arsed cookies. No Nutella ones because everyone does those. We will be making apple pie stuffed cookies, apple pie cheesecake cookies, and dramatic gooey pistachio crème cookies. Also, mum’s carrot cake cookies because her carrot cake is legendary. Honestly the sky is the limit with cookies.”

For those who have yet to succumb to their first hit of Crack pastry, it’s a simple model. You put yourself in the online Crack Lottery from 6 pm (sharp!) every Sunday night starting from 23 June (that’s in ten days folks). If you get an order in before they sell out, you then pick up the pie the following Saturday from 10 am at their kitchen at 20 Amberley Avenue Canberra Airport.

Gina will soon be spending her weeks baking several hundred pies in a flurry of flour, butter and fruit and the pair plan to start shipping interstate soon.

Speaking of butter, Anna wants customers to know that a $4 price rise in pies (they will cost $49) is due to the almost doubling price of butter since 2021.

“We buy butter in 25 kilo batches and while they were $150, they’ve gone up to $300.”

But weighing in between 1.5 and 2 kgs each the pies are still good value for money.

She also said that she and Gina were looking at ordering a pastry sheeter to cut down on how much muscle-power Gina needed to put into rolling out the pastry each week.

“But otherwise, everything else will stay the same.”

We will warn you once more. One pie is all it takes to get hooked.