Kyiv Cake, Baklava Buns, and Welcome to London

Meet the bakers using sweet treats and sisterhood as an antidote to violence

Take a journey through London with two bakers determined to spread joy through their offerings, against a backdrop of war in their homelands and far-right resurgence in the UK.

By Riana Austin

“Treat yo’self” winks the neon sign behind the patisserie counter of Cream Dream café in London’s Covent Garden, where the candy-hued, fantastical desserts make me feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. At this point, I should probably disclose I’m already a fangirl. As an ex-professional baker and vegan-about-town, I find that Cream Dream is one of London’s best bakeries; for a while now, I’ve been following its owner, Yelyzaveta Tataryna, on Instagram. At the age of 23, Tataryna, a Ukrainian refugee, founded Cream Dream after living just four months in the UK. Her café’s aesthetic might be an ode to princesscore (think cascading blossoms and pastel pink walls and chairs), but from the giant illuminated map of Ukraine by the entrance to the jar of FUCK pUTIN wristbands by the till, it’s clear there’s more to her branding than meets the eye.

Scooping my first bite of her miniature Kyiv cake, I discover velvety creams, crunchy-chewy layers of meringue, and a serious commitment to hazelnut. But I’m not just here for a taste test: I’ve come to learn about those looking to reclaim sweet treats and baking — commonly considered outside politics or a creed for tradwives — as a means of resistance. It’s the autumn of 2025; Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine, while Israel expands its genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, London has recently witnessed one of the largest far-right protests in British history; in the days preceding the march, a Sikh woman in the Midlands was raped in broad daylight and told during the assault, “you don’t belong in this country,” and in Bristol, a nine-year-old girl was shot repeatedly in a racially-motivated attack. With the hard-right party Reform UK leading the polls, our Prime Minister’s response has been to tighten restrictions on migrants’ right to remain, to propose the use of army barracks for housing asylum seekers, and to ban protest group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act.

In such painful times, eating cake may seem like an empty gesture, but getting to know both Tataryna and Sara Assad-Mannings, a London-based baker with Palestinian roots, piqued my curiosity. What role might sharing desserts play in building community and resilience? Join me in criss-crossing the capital to trace the stories of two bakers, mindful of violence raging both near and far, but choosing all the same to open spaces that foster connection, joy, and hope.

Fittingly for a story about love, we start on Valentine’s Day 2023, with the grand opening of Cream Dream. To the sound of whooping, Tataryna steps through the doorway of her newly opened café, framed by star-shaped balloons, to greet the growing crowd. Wearing a pink tulle dress and chunky trainers, she covers her face with her hands as the press go ape and well-wishers, mainly Ukrainian women, wave mini national flags. BBC News appears, as does a representative from the Ukrainian embassy. 500 customers buy everything: not just the cakes intended for that day, but her entire stock. When the footage airs that night on BBC London, you can tell the anchor is being genuine when she calls Tataryna a “remarkable woman.”

The accolade is fair, but the journey to the opening was unsparing. While studying for a mathematics degree in Kyiv, Tataryna realized she wanted to open a café — so she taught herself to bake by watching YouTube videos in between classes.

Moving to London was never part of the plan, but war changed that. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Tataryna was forced to flee. She went first to Poland, where, despite her own hardships, she worked to support Ukrainian women traumatized by loss and weaponized rape. Germany came next, then Türkiye, and finally, the UK. When she arrived, she knew no one. She lived in a tiny room where the landlord demanded six months’ rent in advance (compensation for housing a refugee), sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Tataryna longed only for the war to stop.

But those early weeks in London were a crucible that caused something to shift. “I was so, so mad at Putin,” says Tataryna to me as we share Kyiv cake one day at Cream Dream and discuss her journey. She’s wearing a quilted bed jacket covered in tiny roses, her mermaid-like chestnut hair spilling down to her waist. “I thought, what else can happen? I decided I have to live now.” Reanimated, her café concept fused with a mission to provide a safe landing for Ukrainian refugees by offering them employment, a network, and sisterhood. She wanted the space to stand in opposition to all forms of violence, including by offering a 100% vegan menu.

At first, bringing her dream to life was tough. Tataryna struggled to find financial backers, impaired by the double stigma of being a refugee and a woman dreaming about a pink café. Eventually, a Ukrainian investor stepped in, allowing her to set her flag down in London’s prestigious Covent Garden. For Tataryna, sharing cake not only became a tool for healing her community, but as per her slogan — “desserts, self-care and smashing stereotypes” — it was also a delicious way to clap back at haters.

Illustration by Apoorva Sripathi.

Joy and uplift guide Cream Dream’s decor; there’s something charmingly DIY about it, and I mean that in the best possible way. It reminds me of a women’s refuge I’ve stayed in, where poetry, affirmations, and butterflies arc up the stairs, and there’s a room filled with storybooks and toys for those of us with children. At Tataryna’s, you can’t help but smile when you enter the riotous bathroom. Hot-pink tiles jostle with irreverent artwork (“the cats and I talk shit about you”); the cubicles are painted with flowers, and the mirror is emblazoned with the message “you look absolutely stunning today.” Upstairs in the cafe, there’s a portrait wall of sheroes: it includes famous Ukrainian pioneers, Tataryna’s mum, and a mirror. “For you! Because you are enough,” she explains, and it’s the same generosity I see when I watch her work alongside the fellow refugees that staff her cafe. “Yes, I’m big sister,” she nods when I ask how she perceives her role in the community.

My favourite delicacy at Cream Dream is the honey cake. The sour cherry at the centre is a Tataryna-family twist. I have it with Carpathian tea that comes in a rose chintz teapot. Tataryna says they serve everything as they do back home, “family style,” which I know is a code for “with love.” As I rehearse the ritual, pouring the tea into my dainty cup and using my miniature cake spoon, I’m suddenly returned to childhood.

It’s time now to cross the river to South London. You’ll feel the tempo change; thronging tourists give way to a village vibe, and the flavours we are seeking out also head south, from the Black Sea to the Levant. Our destination is Bunhead Bakery in the leafy burbs of Herne Hill, opened by Palestinian-British pastry chef Sara Assad-Mannings on the day of her 30th birthday in May 2024. Floor-to-ceiling windows flood the space with light, while framed snaps of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, bright graphic prints, and a smiley-face plushie put us in a mellow mood.

Although she is most well-known for her plus-sized, artisanal buns scented with rose water, orange blossom, or cardamon, Assad-Mannings also sells cake, finish-at-home knafeh, and riffs on focaccia (some days featuring za’atar, others perhaps some red shatta hot honey). Within days of opening, the bakery went from a local gem to South London’s worst-kept secret; on weekends, queues snake around the block, and by 1 pm, they are often sold out.

Chatting with Assad-Mannings on Zoom one morning after she’d finished baking, she explained that Bunhead Bakery started as a passion project during COVID, out of her one-bedroom flat. She went on to describe how her journey to a bricks-and-mortar site dovetailed with her rising advocacy for Palestine, where the majority of her family lives. After Israel invaded Gaza in October 2023, Assad-Mannings increasingly found herself gravitating toward Palestinian flavours and using her social media accounts to raise awareness and share resources about Palestine with her 21K followers. Though she’s adamant that her buns are meant to foster and reflect joy, representing the things that make her motherland beautiful, they’re also a vital platform for resistance — as she underlines in her tagline #srslydough: a reminder of the need to act as well as enjoy. Opening a permanent home for her bakery both allowed her to fulfil a professional ambition and increase the visibility and impact of her cause.

From the beginning, merch has been a key element of Assad-Manning’s business strategy. To get Bunhead off the ground, she first sold t-shirts, starting with one that reworked Cyndi Lauper’s pop classic: GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE BUNS. Another read WE ARE ALL PALESTINE and was accompanied by an image of a watermelon and a smiling bun waving a keffiyeh. They sold so well that Assad-Manning was able to open her first physical bakery space, and later, to support charities delivering on-the-ground projects in Gaza and the West Bank. Wearers spread the portable slogans online and IRL, in the process marking themselves out as a tribe of “Bunheads” and raising thousands of pounds to supply people in Palestine with urgent supplies like tents and water.

With many of her family still living in Palestine, everything to do with Bunhead Bakery is personal for Assad-Mannings. Her love of food is intertwined with memories of feasts carefully prepared by her teta (grandmother); Bunhead is decorated with photographs taken by her father, and on Instagram, there are pictures of a dungareed little Sara chillin’ by the Dead Sea. Being forced to watch as Gaza is starved has been “gut-wrenching,” but for Assad-Mannings, who has inherited what she terms a “Palestinian mindset,” despair must be countered with fight. And she sees baking as part of hers: it is a way to help ensure the survival of her culture.

Sourcing balady¹ (local) produce from Palestine is an important part of Bunhead’s concept; Assad-Mannings family members send over what they can, though the war has made this extremely difficult. These ingredients are the secret to Assad-Mannings’ most powerful tool: flavour. Tentative customers are lured in by her original cinnamon buns, before being pointed towards her bestselling baklava buns, or the “advanced-level” buns flavoured with grape molasses and tahini. Being greedy as I am, I’ve sampled the gamut, discovering new pleasures in pomegranate jallab, almondy mahleb, and the tangy pop of strawberry sumac (the fruit is known as “red gold” and has been a vital crop in Gaza for over 50 years, but is currently threatened by Israel’s widespread destruction). Assad-Mannings aims to use taste to foster cultural understanding and hopefully lead others to political engagement, pinning up Free Palestine flyers for customers to read as they queue for the till.

The culinary savants amongst us may notice that buns are not a traditional Palestinian dessert. Indeed, they are a distinctly Sara Assad-Mannings innovation: a feat of skill and creativity, and a celebration of her mixed-race identity (her mother is from Palestine, her father is white British). Having grown up with fragile links to the diaspora and minimal representation, freestyling with the flavours and techniques of both cultures has allowed her to own her story and encourage others to find their own way in telling theirs, too. The buns also raise a joyous middle finger to an industry that continues to pigeonhole global majority chefs while their white colleagues are permitted to experiment or borrow wholesale from whatever culture they like. Though a handful of customers have criticized Assad Mannings’ hybrid approach, the risk has paid off, with Bunhead making it onto the Good Food Guide’s 2025 list of best bakeries in Britain.

Like Tataryna at Cream Dream, Assad-Mannings invokes the domestic sphere to build community. Running the business with her Black-Sri Lankan British best friend, Georgia Wickremeratne, along with a seven-woman team, she manages to imbue the grab-and-go set-up with a sense of intimacy. The two business partners are often pictured together, and they always look so happy: leaning in or unconsciously mirroring each other, covered perhaps with flour or in mid-guffaw. Their joy is infectious, and the rest of the Bunhead staff exude just as much warmth. “I want you to feel like you are coming into my home,” Assad-Mannings explains. In the same way that Tataryna’s desserts are served as if you are family, so Assad-Mannings’ buns are rooted in the principles of nafas — Arabic for the secret ingredient of love.

I carry my box of buns to the park opposite the bakery. Settled on a bench, I am tickled to see a brown woman like me sitting nearby; she’s also polishing off a bun. We both smile. The sun is bright, I lick sticky icing from my fingers, and marvel at the lightness of the dough. In these difficult times, there is much dividing us; the work ahead will be tough, but by regrouping with my sweet treats, I take hope in the continued will of individuals and communities to push for change.

Alright, there’s just one journey left. Take my hand and let’s return to the Thames for one more celebration as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve 2024.

We’re packed like sardines, and our necks are craned as fusillades of red, white, and blue shoot into the sky. The strains of the track “Apple” by Charli XCX set the mood, and a gigantic LED pink heart lights up the London Eye. The night explodes with tunes and rockets, and a voice clip from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan booms over the crowd: “No matter what happens, London will always be a place of hope and a place for everyone.” Elton’s classic “I’m Still Standing” begins to play, and then Paddington Bear, patron saint of migrants, pops up in the Eye and wishes us a heartfelt HAPPY NEW YEAR! The mood is 100% London: it’s joy and colour and a backbone of Blitz spirit, reminding us to stand together, as we did in 1936 against British fascist Oswald Mosley’s army of blackshirts when they thought they could own our streets. A tear runs down my cheek as a deep pain finds itself tended to with care.

I remember this night as a choice.

It’s not that I’m downplaying the current political situation in the UK, as we wrestle with a terrifying lurch toward the far right. During the summer of 2025, London saw a spate of protests: from targeted demonstrations outside hotels housing migrants, to continued attacks on our Mayor (most recently by Trump in his September UN address), and the emergence of “the Pink Ladies,” a concerned group of (white) mothers and grandmothers calling for mass deportation to protect children from an imagined invasion of migrant paedophiles. Then, on September 13, 2025, we had the Unite the Kingdom rally. Attracting between 110,000 to 150,000 “patriots,” it was led by convicted criminal Tommy Robinson and featured a video-link speech by Elon Musk, warning that “violence is coming” and “we either fight back or die.”

In this darkening hour, food and the hospitality sector have become a focus point for hate. The government has paraded footage of restaurant raids on illegal workers as proof of their action towards ridding the country of “illegal” immigrants; parliament has debated the cultural compatibility of halal slaughterhouses and considered whether pie and mash, a symbol of beleaguered white identity, should be granted protected status; and our Prime Minister has instigated a crackdown on illegal food delivery drivers that has disproportionally targeted “ethnically diverse and economically deprived” areas.

I know this, but I choose to focus on the light as an act of faith in the sense of the word described by bell hooks, renowned writer and intersectional feminist theorist: a quality “not rooted in utopian longing” but borne of an awareness of history and the “many individuals who have offered their lives in the service of justice and freedom.”² We can acknowledge our fear, but we will not be broken.

In London, pushback is being led by a fierce cohort of women. Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina spearheaded the global #CookForUkraine campaign, raising £2.5 million (US$3.9 million). Great British Bake Off winner and national treasure Nadiya Hussain spoke out about Islamophobia and published a cookbook celebrating Ramadan and Eid. Entrepreneur Lorraine Copes continues to grow her respected not-for-profit Be Inclusivity Hospitality, which tackles racial inequality, and cultural commentators Jenny Lau and Anna Sulan Masing released landmark books exploring British-Chinese and ESEA identity through the lens of food.

As for the two heroes in our story, we need to add a note on difference. The challenges Tataryna and Assad-Mannings face are not the same. For starters, London is not Tataryna’s home. Though she is proud that she realized her dream of opening a bakery, returning to Ukraine is always on her mind. “Of course, I am so grateful!” she quickly adds when asked about her long-term plans in the UK, but it’s clear her precarious, second-class status as a migrant takes a heavy toll. In Assad-Mannings’ case, by speaking out about Palestine, she is wading into a major conflict in the culture wars (there were 890 people arrested at the September rally against the ban on Palestine Action in London). As a mixed-race woman in an increasingly ethnonationalist climate, she will have to deal with racism on the streets and in the media. Despite these dissimilarities, Tataryna and Assad-Manning’s objectives are beautifully in sync: sweet treats + sisters united = a renewed social contract, and a fuck-you to strongmen.

Given how hard our two bakers work and how much they offer, of course, I want them to be surrounded by community and love. Bunhead Bakery has a diverse fanbase — locals, hipsters, and the Palestinian diaspora — and while Assad-Mannings is a diehard South Londoner delighted to represent her hood, it’s this last group’s approval that means the most to her. Back in Covent Garden, I’ve noticed hipsters don’t really go to Cream Dream. I don’t know why — maybe they’re snobby about the colour pink. But Tataryna says her bakery has a very loyal following: mums and their young daughters out for a treat, or women celebrating something special. Life has got a lot better, she tells me, since her little sister has also migrated to the UK: “She is my rock.”

When I leave Cream Dream after an afternoon of chatting with Tataryna over sweet treats, I give her a gift to thank her for everything she does: a small bottle of French perfumed oil.³ The next day, Tataryna texts me:

“I smell like a princess thanks to you ”

and I think to myself — GOOD, you absolutely deserve it.

One final thought — which you could think of as an invitation. We often speak of the importance of breaking bread. We recognize it as a transformative act that draws us into a fellowship of heightened responsibility and openness to the other. But what of the power of treats that are sweeter than loaves? Having spent time with Assad-Mannings and Tataryna, I’m calling for a new culture based on breaking cake: glacé cherries, sprinkles, liqueur. Ours will be a sisterhood; a jamboree with high heels, elasticated waistbands, and a groaning table (you bring your flava, and you can taste mine). We’ll dance, laugh, get impassioned, and eat. Together, I believe we just might put the world to rights.

Author’s note: Many thanks to Sara Assad-Mannings and Yelyzaveta (Lisa) Tataryna for giving up time in such busy lives to talk with me.

Born in Jakarta but a long-time Londoner, ex-baker Riana Austin writes about plant-based dining and the intersections of food and power. She was a 2025 Vittles mentee.

1. Buying balady produce is a core feature of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement that uses non-violent economic pressure to challenge Israel’s aggression.

2. bell hooks, All About Love, William Morrow, 2016, p.89

3. Assad-Mannings got an espresso martini mixer, as I know she’s partial.