The new dessert stall in Gungahlin is an exotic boon for those with a sweet tooth. Photo: Tenele Conway.
When new dessert store Kurimu x Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart opened in Gungahlin in late 2024, it had many Canberrans wondering what a cheese tart is.
Despite being exposed to ample food media, I will admit it’s a question I asked myself, which is why I decided it was time to take a deep dive into the dessert, and the brand, promising to satisfy the sweet tooth of Canberrans.
The Gungahlin location is a freestanding stall in front of the Coles supermarket in the Gungahlin Village complex. The dual naming represents a collaboration between two businesses that sit under the umbrella company ST Group, best known in Canberra for its PappaRich Malaysian restaurants. It also owns nearly a dozen well-known Asian food brands, including Breadtop and Panda Hot Pot.
Between Kurimu and Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart, there are more than 25 locations across Australia, some of which are stand-alone stores for each brand, the others a collaboration where the two brands are joining forces, each with its own niche products, Japanese choux pastry and baked cheese tarts.
The many flavours of Hokkaido baked cheese tarts. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Standing in front of the selection of pastries, the flavour choice is quite overwhelming. Across the range of choux, tarts, and croissants, there are fruity flavours like strawberry, mango and almond, mango and passionfruit, lychee and raspberry and peach almond. There are rich classics like salted caramel and burnt butter, Japanese-inspired takes with a number of pastries offering matcha and the Chinese flavour, salted egg.
Most of the pastries are around $5 and sized well to be a small bite to go with coffee.
As I sat down with a selection of pastries from across the range, a small bite was not what I would be enjoying on this day.
Diving into the long, skinny choux pastries in original and raspberry and lychee, I was greeted with a crunchy and textural shell, a good quantity of filling, and an all-round pleasant but somewhat subtle eating experience.
If you are looking for a frame of reference for a choux pastry, you are likely more familiar with it than you think as it’s what a profiterole is made from. I prefer the Kurimu version, which is a crunchy almond-based choux. The texture seems to resist choux’s urge to go soggy, which so many profiteroles struggle with.
A selection of pastries from new Gungahlin store Kurimu x Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Next up, a salted-egg croissant. This croissant really packs a punch in a small size and was overflowing with the rich salted-egg filling. Salted egg may sound unusual, but if you haven’t tried it, I recommend seeking it out. It’s rich and buttery while being a little sweet and a little umami. Paired with the flaky croissant, this was a winner.
Saving the most unfamiliar till last, I chose two varieties of the baked cheese tarts, original and salted caramel.
While resembling a Portuguese tart in size and shape, this is where the similarities end. The shell, unlike the flaky puff pastry of a Portuguese tart, is a shortcrust pastry. The filling is slightly cheesy without being too savoury and the version with the salted caramel has a flaky topping and a hidden, generous blob of a rich caramel underneath the soft cheese filling.
Both versions offered a good balance between sweet and savoury, a three-bite size and an overall delicious experience.
Having visited the new Gungahlin store and waddled away in satisfaction, there was still a question on my mind. Were these tarts really from Hokkaido?
There was only one way to know for sure, and that was to call in a favour from contacts on the ground. After a few quick messages, I had a Hokkaido-based Canberran making a beeline for Milk Kobo in the ski village of Niseko. With the enthusiasm of a 20-something itinerant ski-season expatriate being promised the title of foreign correspondent, I harvested the lowdown on the origin of baked cheese tarts.
Canberra man turned foreign correspondent Oliver Mudge finds out the real story of the Japanese cheese tart in Niseko. Photo: Oliver Mudge.
While available in many locations across Hokkaido, they were actually invented in Osaka on Japan’s Honshu Island around 2011 by a cafe named Pablo. Making their way to Hokkaido, where 90 percent of Japan’s dairy industry resides, they were further refined and popularised before they were imported into Australia in 2016 by ST Group.
With the chain growing fast in Australia and the product being a solid choice for the discerning sweets eater, I suspect these Japanese delights will soon be well known around the country.
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