Food

Cake Experience from Sesame Tiny Bakery in Berkeley, CA

You know I love cake! I heard that Sesame Tiny Bakery did some pop ups around the East Bay and that they eventually took over the Pie Society space in Berkeley. Their website as of this date of this blog post doesn’t have their menu, but that’s probably because their hours/days are limited and their menu changes every so often. 

Weekly Cake

They have a cake special that they post some time in the week where you can pre-order for a Friday or Saturday pickup. The prior week was a strawberry cake and I needed to bring a cake to my parents’ place for an early Father’s Day celebration, I decided to give Sesame Tiny Bakery a try, and here’s my Sesame Tiny Bakery review based on the items I tried. 

Their interior. The location is more so on Parker St, and there are signs pointing you to the interior. Didn’t get lost! The inside is large, but their front space is small. The large space looked like more of kitchen spaces.
Right when you walk in, their “front desk” area. There is the “weekly” cake and slices of that cake for sale. First come first serve, etc.
Another review of their front. They have various pastries/cookies, subject to availability.

Interior and Design

Sesame Tiny Bakery is such a cute spot. There’s some area outside to sit around, and the inside is rather interesting. There’s a small display case and most of the room is kitchen space, perhaps a shared kitchen space kind of thing? If the whole space is bakery space for Sesame Tiny Bakery, that doesn’t make too much sense since the bakery is tiny and the goods offered is limited. 

The menu on the weekend I went. They did mention they were sold out of several of the items.

Handwriting and Drawings

See above menu. Their drawings of their goods on their customized menus are soooo adorable! 

Cake and a Slice

Each whole cake cost depends on the ingredients. There was a cherry cake for $60 the other week, and the strawberry cake this past week was $54. The cake is rather small and serves 8, so I also ordered a slice when I went to pick up my pre-ordered whole cake. 

Addition to the whole cake, I got a cake slice and a couple jasmine tea cookies. The cake slices are pre-packaged and there are also a limited amount available.
Cake box presentation for the whole cake
Slice of the cake. $8. Very small slice.

Strawberry Cake Review 

Description: Almond chiffon cake layered with organic strawberries, Yunnan tea pastry cream, and topped with vanilla bean whipped cream. 

The cake overall was really moist and light yet significant in flavor. It sort of reminded us a little bit of those Asian bakery cakes we had when we were growing up (we were not a fan of those unfortunately), but way more high end. The cream texture is very soft, so if you’re looking for that frosting/icing stuff and not whipped cream texture, then this cake might not be for you. I really like whipped cream so I enjoyed it. Not sure if I enjoyed a slice for $8 or a small cake for $54 worth, but overall, the cake is pretty good. Very cute cake!! 

Jasmine Tea Cookie with Caramel

Jasmine Tea Cookie 

I also got a couple cookies to share with the fam. Jasmine tea is such a lovely flavor, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to taste the jasmine from these cookies. They were more of a nice shortbread, rich and buttery. Delicious, but didn’t get that Jasmine flavor. I’m no fan of caramel so I got a piece with the least amount of caramel. The fam agrees that it’s a good cookie, but they also couldn’t tell it was a jasmine cookie. 

Whole Cake Time!

Picking up my preorder was easy. I got an order confirmation and just went into the bakery during the designated times and said my name and they gave me my cake. Below is a photo from their website of how the cake looks. 

The cake from their website
The cake received!

Overall Thoughts / Will I go Back?

I’ll need to check on a weekly basis to see what cake they will have, so if it’s something that intrigues me, I might go check it out! The strawberry cake was pricey, but it was also delicious. Not too sweet. Some of our relatives thought the cake had really great flavor, but freaked out when they heard how much the tiny cake cost. I love cake, so I’d pay a bit more for really amazing cake. Not sure if Sesame Tiny Bakery will expand more to have more items and such, but if they do, I’ll be really excited for that!