JoJo's Danish Bakery & Café
- Food served: Mon–Fri 8am–7pm; Sat 9.30am–5pm; Sun 9.30am–6pm [Wed games night open till 10pm]
- Also offers: Children's portions, Wheelchair access
- Capacity: 12
- Open since: 2011
Tell us more about this venue.
- Average price:
£7 (lunch)
The 2012 edition of The List's Eating & Drinking Guide is out now – only £5.95 (+p&p).
This is the kind of operation which can give Edinburgh a cosmopolitan name. Fresh, well-crafted pastries from the hand of half-Dane Joanna Coleman (aka JoJo) are baked in the basement of this Old Town café and sold not just from the premises but also farmers' markets in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Fife. A few years ago, JoJo's Scandinavian ancestry led her to Denmark to take courses on the art of pastry-making, which involves perfecting the technique of rolling butter and pastry into thin layers which are then gradually built up. Stars of the show are the flaky pastry crowns, cinnamon swirls and deliciously light almondy tebirkes with their distinctive poppy-seed topping. The café itself is sparse and simple that's a mix of Scandinavian minimalism and a let's-keep-it-simple approach: just four IKEA-esque bare-wood tables and little more than a few Danish flags for decoration. Soup and simple sandwiches using bread from Gorgie's Patisserie Jacob offer a savoury lunchtime turn.
- High point: Fresh, light, handmade Danish pastries
- Low point: Beyond the pastries, frills are few
Events at JoJo's Danish Bakery & Café (26 St Mary's Street, Edinburgh)
Reviews of JoJo's Danish Bakery & Café (26 St Mary's Street, Edinburgh)
- 2. Cakey, Edinburgh – 28 May 2012, 12:11pm
JoJo's Danish Bakery & CaféReport -
I recently booked on a chocolate making course at Jojos and it was disappointing. The cafe itself is 'sparse' as the above review mentions - it is not exactly a concious effort at Scandinavian minimalism though, there just isn't much there (and even my ikea table at home isn't as wobbly as the one I used). It's a relatively small space and the number of people on the course made it seem cramped, and some people on the opposite end of the tables couldn't see the demonstrations.
The course was not exactly chocolate making, just tasting and 'having fun' with chocolate. All very well however if this is the case it shouldn't be advertised as chocolate making. All we did was 'make' some hot chocolate (4 pieces of chocolate in some hot water with spices), make a chocolate fondant flower (the only useful part of the course) and dip some pre-made chocolate ganache balls into melted chocolate. The chocolate fondant flower making was interesting, however Jojo did not make one first and show us an example of what it should look like and there were some 'interesting' flowers as a result. For the truffles, we did scoop out some of the pre-made ganache and roll these into balls before dipping them into chocolate, I suppose this could count as 'making' truffles but really what would have been useful is taking us through the whole process rather than using pre-made ganache. It would have been good to learn about tempering chocolate: how to know when a ganache is ready to be set and how to know when chocolate is ready to be used to cover them. We are meant to receive an email with these instructions (still waiting...) but really I could find these from a book in the library and was hoping for some chocolate making in practice.
The course was poorly put together as we had to wait around at the end for the chocolate truffles to set, with absolutely nothing to do (about 40 minutes) - this should have been done at the beginning so we could have at least left when we wished to. Whilst waiting around for this, I tried to press Jojo for her chocolate making 'secrets' but she didn't really answer any questions which was a shame.
I have tried the pastries at Jojo's before and they were nice. I wouldn't recommend eating in as I didn't enjoy the atmosphere and I don't recommend the chocolate making course.
- 1. Discodropout, Paisley – 24 March 2012, 2:06pmJoJo's Danish Bakery & CaféReport
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Cannot get through, by email, phone, facebook, text, If I had a pidgeon id send on but she'd probably bake it.
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