What should we know about The Middle Child Bakery?
The little Northside 'burb of "Beau-mount" (or "Beau-mont" if you're posh) has had its baked goods status upended with the arrival of Shona Quinn. The pastry chef has worked around the globe from the French Alps to NYC, and opened The Middle Child Bakery at the end of 2023, after supplying other cafés beforehand.
What did you have?
Never have we ever seen a bakery with so many options for sugar overload. Rice Krispie squares, brownies, jaffa cakes, jammy dodgers, bakewell tarts, banana bread, coffee slices, cream cakes, shortbread, cinnamon rolls, scones, not to mention the cookies. It's a sugar fever dream.
The lovely staff told us that the cookie squares and the jaffa cake are must haves, and lord knows we needed help navigating it all. A Kinder cookie square (€3) was very fudgey, but verging on the sickly side of sweet - we were glad it wasn't any bigger for our insulin's sake. The jaffa cake (€3.20) had a crumbly sponge topped with generous tangy orange jelly and a dark chocolate coating - we concur it's a must.
We're suckers for a cinnamon roll (€3.50), and here the fluffy dough had lashings of cinnamon and sugar in every gooey bite, with the icing having a slight citrus tang. Another must order.
An almond croissant is our bakery litmus test, and since opening they've had to double their production due to sell outs. This one (€3.50 if you're keeping tabs on the #almondcroissantindex) was more crunchy than flaky, a little overdone maybe, but the butter was evident, and the almond sweetness of the well portioned filling was spot on.
The "crookie" (€3.90) is the TikTok pastry du jour, going so viral that even Parisian patisseries have starting baking cookies into their croissants, and The Middle Child are flying the flag for Dublin. Similar to the almond, the pastry was very crunchy, but how they got chocolate chip cookie into every bite is some kind of sorcery. Similar to the cookie square, we could only manage half of it before starting to feel the sugar coma.
We were back on track with their classic croissant. Topped with powdered sugar (the drug of choice here), it was light, airy and nicely puffed up. The apple cinnamon crumble was another knockout - moist, spongy and ideal apple/cinnamon ratios, and the sugar felt more restrained than some of the others.
They bake bread too, with a couple of loaves rotating daily. We tried their white poppy seed (€3.50) and their rye (€6), and while they didn't blow our socks off, generally needing more chew, they were decent.
Are there seats?
They have a bench inside the bakery, but if it's a nice day Ellenfield Park is close-by for a picnic.
What is there to drink?
Their coffee is Roasted Brown and from the handful of times we've visited it's the best in the area, and well-priced. They also have soft drinks, but you won't need any more sugar.
Why should I go?
The Middle Child is a sanctuary for anyone with a sweet tooth, and a great addition to the area, and to the ever growing list of great Dublin bakeries.
The Middle Child Bakery
76 Shantalla Road, Beaumont, Dublin 9
