Bonding over beanies, babies and baking
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As one half of the husband and wife team behind Braddon’s perennially popular Sweet Bones Bakery & Café, it’s unsurprising that chef Emily Brindley cooks her way through difficult times.
But eight years ago, when she was pregnant with her first son, Emily – who comes from a long line of chefs – found herself consumed by a different creative endeavour: crocheting animal beanies.
“I was obsessed. I thought I was making all these baby-sized beanies – there was a pig, a kangaroo, a frog, a bear, a bunny – but it turns out, I had no idea what size a baby’s head really was. My beanies were miniature,” Emily laughs.
For US-born long-time Canberran, both the beanies and babies are linked to a friendship that’s seen her through good times and bad – with her friend and website designer Karmin Cooper.
The pair met through mutual friends, first bonding over the challenge of trying to become parents. Each had had miscarriages and talked openly about the experience.
Joyously, both ended up having babies just a few months apart, providing the pair with a chance to connect over new parenthood and for Emily, have a friend support her through postnatal depression.
“Not having family in Canberra, it was amazing having a friend that nothing seemed too hard for. Karmin is such a generous person, and super kind. I gave Karm one of my undersized baby beanies – a frog – and our boys fast became best friends,” says Emily.
The friendship later crossed into business: Karmin owns New Best Friend, which designed the Sweet Bones website, menus and other collateral, projects which now see Emily referring to Karmin as her “computer whiz friend”.
But the friends’ latest collaboration, a Sweet Bones zine, is a truly personal affair.
“The Sweet Bones cookbook sold out a couple of years ago, and there are some challenges meaning we can’t get it republished. Every Christmas it comes up as people keep asking me for them – but I only have two left, one for each of my sons on their 18th birthday,” says Emily.
At the end of Canberra’s 2021 lockdown, seeing Emily desperately missing her US-based family, after clocking up over two years since her last visit, Karmin found a solution for Emily’s recipe-hungry customers as well as Emily’s own homesickness.
“I really struggle missing my family and Karim said: ‘Let’s create a magazine. You write the recipes and I’ll design it’,” Emily says.
“She gave me about a month to do my part,” Emily laughs. “But somehow between mothering and running Sweet Bones, preparing to open our second business (at Scullin shops in early 2022) and volunteering locally, I made it happen. It was a really good distraction from my everyday life,” she says.
The result is intensely personal: a magazine filled with a dozen recipes around the theme of home and family.
“I decided to dedicate it to my Aunt Joan who had passed away three years ago. So that meant the zine and the stories in it are very heartfelt. Because we were just coming out of lockdown I focused on recipes that are easy to whip up after a day of work and contain lots of shortcuts,” she says.
The result has been so well received that the duo plan on releasing the magazine quarterly, in line with the seasons.
“I needed to have a hard copy in my hand, that’s how I like to experience things. But Karmin is so involved in the digital world she wants to do an online version too – that means we will be able to share it with friends and family across the world,” Emily says.
Family who have been posted a hard copy of Edition 1 have already reported back, and it seems Emily’s passion for family came through strongly.
Her cousin (son of Emily’s much-loved Aunt Joan) sat down for a read and ‘cried the whole way through’.
The next day, he picked it up again for a second read.
“He cried all the way through that too,” Emily says.
Pick up your copy of the Sweet Bones zine instore at 8/18 Lonsdale Street, Braddon.
