The best road trip treats from the bakery - Travel Australia

Dec 18, 2024

Sometimes you just can't beat a classic.

It’s arguably not a legitimate Australian summer holiday if there isn’t a finger bun involved – topped with pink icing and eaten from a box or a bag in the car on the way to somewhere – involved.

There’s only so much trail mix a family can eat before the “are we there yet” chime moves from amusing to agonising, and pulling over to eat becomes a unanimous salve. Enter Australia’s best bakery road trip treats, those nostalgic baked things so good and so pretty you’re forced to press your nose against the bakery glass cabinet to get a better look.

Neenish tarts, lamingtons, molten potato pies and wobbly custard slices; when you step off the well-trodden path-slash-freeway, there’s a nostalgia bomb on every corner, in almost every country town and surf town, every street in the far end of woop-woop.

We may know well that it’s about the journey not the destination, but Australia’s highways offer too many gastronomic quick fixes. Finding something special demands a little extra work, a turn to take a road less travelled. Will it be some international fare – a happy-ish burger and fries – or something that speaks of place and time, that invites new memories to one day treasure?

Herein lies a sliding-doors moment on your holiday adventure, a chance to elevate the road trip and bring one – or all – of Australia’s classic bakery treats into the journey. These holidays, be bold. Take the exit off the freeway, stumble upon some of the small towns sprinkled along the way to wherever you’re going. Bypass the drive through, the service stations and the lure of plastic playgrounds on the main roads, discover a bit more of this wide brown land, and find yourself a road trip worth having.

Here’s our definitive list of the Australian road trip bakery treats that are worth the detour.

Potato Pie

Potatoes on a pie is not an Australian invention. And yet it’s unconscionable to go on an Aussie road trip without stopping at a country town (or a surf town, at a push), for a pie whose pastry top has been given the heave-ho and replaced with a swirl of golden mash. Mash-topped pies are such a perfect example of a pie that it remains a mystery why anyone would order an alternative. About 45 minutes west from Melbourne’s centre is a place called Buddy’s that bakes a cracker, and the one in Berry’s Milkwood Bakery is so good it could be your destination.

A warmly-lit glass window covers an array of golden baked goods inside a pale-walled bakery with rows of bread and pies lined up on the shelves behind them

Vanilla Slice

A humble slab of real-vanilla custard between two puffy pastry sheets, perhaps topped with a zingy passionfruit glaze is a uniquely Australian treat and ritual. The vanilla slice is a polarising pastry. It’s so simple in its elements and yet it’s so often ordinary, bordering on revolting – dubbed “snot block” by naysayers. The best custard slices are a sum of a few elevated components. Look for crisp mille feuille pastry, and custard that will hold its shape in the block form, but isn’t rubbery, or too sweet. Sometimes it’s finished with a dusting of icing sugar, sometimes with sliced almonds or pastry crumbs. Others top it with a smooth and shiny glaze. For those wanting road trip vibes without the journey, Good Ways Deli in both Alexandria and Redfern does an excellent custard slice. South of Melbourne, the Vanilla Slice Cafe in Sorrento does a towering, creamy and rich vanilla slice worth the stop (even a trip on its own).

A close-up photo of a vanilla slice from Good Ways deli, cut in half stacked on top of each other dripping with yellow icing.

Tell any visitor to Australia about the finger bun, and receive a glazed look about the iced treat. But there’s something nostalgic and delightful about its simplicity. Most finger buns – long buttered fruit-studded brioche – are topped with Boston icing, and the colour pink reigns. They’re made for school tuck shops and country town bakeries, and as a nation we can’t shake them, nor want to. Pick one up in any town, or pack them to go from the best in the country – Humble Bakery in Surry Hills – where the finger bun has no preservatives, a thick slab of butter in the middle, and a pink ribbon of frosting made from cream cheese.

A selection of pink-piped fingerbuns sit inside an open white box

Cream bun

The cream bun, baked brioche style – sometimes studded with a few sultanas – sliced open and filled with fresh cream and usually a glace cherry stud on top, is known in more sophisticated parts of Australia as maritozzi. The latter is as classically Roman as carbonara and the 1953 Audrey Hepburn film, the former an Aussie road-trip, pit-stop essential. Old-school bakeries strapped to the main streets of little towns across the country sell versions of this staple, and very often they’re fresh, pillowy and excellently messy. Top tip: find one with fresh cream instead of a mass-produced, sweetened marshmallow-like foam. Or, pick a box up in Sydney before you leave for an iconic road trip treat. Marta in Rushcutter’s Bay does maritozzi-slash-cream buns packed with whipped cream, and sometimes does special flavours like Nutella and pistachio.

A selection of maritozzi cream buns sit on a silver tray dusted with icing sugar with the one on the left dotted with bright fruit

Sausage roll

The ubiquitous sausage roll appears in many forms, some good and some very not good, all across the country. Its hot lava sausage centre is encased in flaky puff pastry and yet so many fail to delight. But when you find a good one, the classic sausage roll is a satisfying, complex creation that delights young and older generations alike. Stop for a one-kilogram sausage roll, or a normal-sized version, at the Kenilworth Bakery tucked away in a World Heritage-listed building in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.