Kiwis are prepared to pay the 24-year-old Aucklander top dollar for a slice of her cakes.
She baked alone. She started the cakes during the Covid lockdown in her second year of university in 2020, when she was attending online classes instead of face-to-face ones. She didn’t have a soundboard
Victoria Roebuck, the founder of Baby Buck Baking, now turns heads among industry leaders. The Taiwan-born Aucklander is currently working with renowned chef Sean Connolly on a limited edition high tea experience launching at Esther restaurant on Valentine’s Day. Just a month ago, she collaborated with Waiheke Island ice cream company Island Gelato on a flavour based on her popular Baby Bruce cake, inspired by the chocolate cake eaten by the character Bruce Bogtrotter in Roald Dahl’s Matilda. In November, former MasterChef NZ judge Josh Emett raved about the same cake on social media.
“Picked this little nugget of a cake up today, and oh my God, it is spectacular ... It’s actually not that sweet, which is a great thing. It’s absolutely delicious,” said Emett in a 41-second video clip to 249,000 Instagram followers. “Quite heavy, quite rich ... amazing. Kids are just so fired up, it’s not funny.”
Baby Bruce costs $36.50 – that’s one slab of cake. Except it isn’t just cake. It weighs 750g, can feed around four people, and contains around 250g of Whittaker’s chocolate (a video posted on her Instagram, included below, shows how she puts the colossus together). The price tag may raise a few eyebrows, but taking into account rising chocolate costs, the price is justified, says Roebuck: “You have to experience it to understand it.”
“It’s very much homemade,” she adds, explaining that a customer pays for quality ingredients, labour and skill. Made in larger batches, Roebuck slices it carefully herself.
It’s a cake that usually sells out. A quick scan of customer reviews on the internet and you find comments like: “best chocolate cake I’ve ever had”, “most insane slice”, “so moist”, “so decadent”. In fact, it was difficult to find any negative reviews.
Roebuck is 24 now. She feels older. People say she’s a viral hit, as if it happened by chance. But her success was earned.
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Advertise with NZME.She grew up cross-culturally (Mum is originally from Taiwan, Dad is from Aotearoa) in what she calls an ingredients household after moving to the North Shore when she was three.
“We had lots of ingredients at home, but never ready-made snacks just to eat,” she explains.
She says it was quite easy to see cooking as a career path, despite studying something not directly cooking related (marketing, information systems and film). Baking is something she enjoys “down to [her] core”. She was the kid at school who baked the cake for friends’ birthdays. She was the kid at home who made scones instead of complaining of hunger. She was the kid who taught herself.
Her childhood Bible: the Edmonds cookery book.
She remembers being 8 and waking up quite early at times while her parents were asleep. Hungry, she’d go straight into the kitchen, but there would be nothing to eat. At least at first.
“I would just have ... raw materials. So then I’d make pancakes, scones. Stuff that is very entry-level. But we had an Edmonds cookbook. Then I would look at that and be like, oh, I can make this work ... if I didn’t have [ingredients] in the kitchen, then I would add other things to try and replicate what the recipe was."
Roebuck’s grandparents lived just up the road. She smiles when she remembers them. The whole family would hang out together at their house on weekends. That’s where they baked pikelets. That’s where they watched MasterChef NZ. And that’s why, when Emett spoke publicly about her food, Roebuck initially got nervous.
“[Any feedback] coming from him is a big deal,” she says. “But he didn’t have anything negative to say. So I was like, oh my God, this is really cool.
“It’s satisfying and very rewarding knowing that your work’s being recognised because I do have lots of imposter syndrome.”
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Advertise with NZME.Despite the serious validation from industry heavyweights, Roebuck is open about struggling to accept that her business success is real and it’s hers. “I’m quite upfront,” she says. “I think it’s important to always be honest.
“With food, it comes naturally ... whereas me as a person, as a business owner, that’s a different story.”
The imposter feeling has improved since she got the Newmarket shop space a few months ago. It used to be an optometrist clinic, which is hard to imagine now with theatre-like red velvet curtains concealing the kitchen; warm colours and steel tables. Getting it set up and running has been the “biggest project ever”, she says, before pointing out that it took a village.
Her friends made the curtains. A customer did the lighting. An Instagram connection did the signage.
“It’s quite a team effort, which is why I find it hard to be like, ‘this is mine’, because it’s really everyone’s,” Roebuck says.
Roebuck has two employees: her Dad (and biggest fan), and another part-timer. She also runs cake decorating workshops. Before the Newmarket store, which is accessible to customers by appointment only, she operated from her home for a year and a half. Alone.
Now she thinks having people around her can be challengingbut company is something she wants to get used to. “Because that’s how a normal, proper working environment would look,” she says.
It could also help with situations like one that happened last October.
A stranger with a bottle of wine in hand walked into the shop, grabbed a spatula from a bowl and started eating from it.
“It was honestly really scary to witness, but thankfully I wasn’t in the kitchen alone at the time. It made me realise how unsafe that could’ve been if I was by myself,” Roebuck wrote on her Instagram post about the incident.
“We eventually got him out of the kitchen, and he was arrested – but the situation definitely shook me up.”
The business name is a nod to Roebuck’s relationship with her big sister, who she feels has been a big part of the Baby Buck Baking success. “Buck” is taken from her surname and “Baby” reflects her place as the little sister.
“She takes photos for me. She helps me set up for events. She comes in to see how I’m going and drops me off food ... I talk to her about everything. This wouldn’t be what it is without her,” she says.
“So, I feel like that’s kind of a testament to her involvement, even though it’s not direct. It’s indirect. And I feel like she doesn’t know it, but it wouldn’t be something without her.”
On what the future looks like, Roebuck says she wants to establish a stable work environment and explore different varieties of products beyond the vintage aesthetic.
“Vintage cakes are quite intricate. There is a bit more labour involved in actually creating them,” she explains. “[I want to make] cakes that are a bit more accessible, so everyone can try a Baby Buck cake.”
If cakes didn’t work out for Roebuck, she says she wouldn’t know what to do.
“I feel nothing would compare.”
Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. Based in Auckland, she covers people, culture and more.
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