What do cakes and origami have in common? Both involve folding. You’re welcome for that clever joke, but it’s not us you have to thank. One Love Pastry Studio is a little-known gem in Dubai that has combined cakes and origami quite literally. The result that has unfolded is unimaginably gorgeous cakes that boast geometric precision. From icosahedron (20-sided polyhedron) to spirals and spheres, this bakery covers it all.
Come to think of it, swotting up the Pythagorean theorem would have been so much more fun if only these geometric cakes made it to the equation…
Who knew cake batter and ganache could be this symmetrically pleasing to the eye?
One Love Pastry’s founders – the loved-up husband-wife duo of Alla and Rami did. If these cakes, or rather the shape of them, ring a bell, it’s because Alla, a Ukrainian national, has trained with Dinara Kasko – the Instagram-famous Ukrainian pastry chef whose architectural cake moulds and dreamy dessert designs have taken the internet by storm. Kasko, now a refugee of the Russian-Ukraine conflict, was featured in the 50 Best for using food to spread the message of peace and love.
That universal message of love was also behind the genesis of One Love Pastry Studio. Born out of Alla and Rami’s fairytale romance coupled with their passion for baking, the bakery was first launched in Kyiv but had to shut shop when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic redirected them back to Dubai where the bakery’s been running out of a cloud kitchen since 2021 where Dubai’s dessert aficionados have been falling acutely in love with their origami-inspired cakes. You’d be obtuse not to!
You can take your pick from sponge cakes oozing pure fruit purees, or opt for cakes that look like the whole dang fruit itself! Case in point: the Mini Cake range which brags astonishing cakes that realistically mimic a fruit such as mandarin, lime, pear and blueberry that when cut or smashed crumble into an explosion of mousse made of the fruit it’s named after.
We vote for an origami cake smash because why should only babies get to indulge in the joy of that trend?
As far as pastry trends go, One Love Pastry studio’s hyper-realistic creations also remind us of the pandemic’s notorious ‘Everything is Cake’ trend. But they use their powers of sculpting dough, frosting and fondant into impossible shapes for the good. Instead of the unsettling images of cake-based severed hands, dirty combs and toilet rolls, here cake transforms into 3D chessboards.
Other creative shapes include pearls and clouds made up of hundreds of spherical balls of cake.
What we’re starstruck with though is a surreal outer space cake that remind us of the drawings from children’s book The Little Prince.
Funnily, one of their other origami cakes sports a fox, an integral character in the famous novella.
Every slice, we’re told, is lovingly handcrafted using only high-grade French chocolate, real fruit purées, vanilla flown in all the way from Madagascar, organic eggs and milk products and top-quality nuts. That’s the carte-blanche we were looking for to indulge guilt-free in these ravishing creations.
They say a thing of beauty is a joy forever and as tempting as it is to preserve these exquisite cakes forever, these freshly-made cakes come with a shelf-life. Which means, you’ll have to adopt the other proverb about not being able to have your cake and eat it. So take all the pictures you want and then dig in!