Jess “Lemon” Liemantara has come a long way since she stepped into the MasterChef Australia kitchen as one of the competition’s youngest contestants in 2018.
At just 19 years old, she impressed judges with ambitious desserts and finished fourth in the season, launching a career built around precision pastry and a love of storytelling through food.
After returning to the franchise twice, including the 2023 Dessert Masters spin-off where her matcha moss-covered bonsai dessert became a viral sensation, Liemantara is now opening her first solo bakery, Jess Lemon, in Nunawading.
The move takes her away from Melbourne’s better-known inner-city bakery precincts and into Melbourne’s east, where she is creating a pastry destination shaped by her own memories and influences.
A long-awaited opening
The bakery was originally planned to open earlier, but Liemantara says delays kept pushing the launch back. While waiting for the space to be completed, she continued selling cakes online and running intimate baking workshops from the unfinished venue.
Now, Jess Lemon is ready to welcome customers with a new pastry menu that marks a shift from the intricate petits gateaux she became known for. “My mum’s been drilling into my head that not everyone’s going to buy mousse cakes every day,” Liemantara says with a laugh.
“Obviously, what I was creating before was more of a gifting option, [so] I wanted to [do] something that was more of an everyday thing.”
Pastries with a personal story
The new menu draws from Liemantara’s years of training, including three years at Ned’s Bake in South Yarra learning laminated pastry, followed by time at Rustica Sourdough and developing her own creations.
For Liemantara, every item holds meaning. “Everything that I create generally has a story behind it, and a lot of things revolve around my family,” she says. That passion comes through in pastries such as the hoisin pork floss danish, which combines childhood flavours and memories from her working years.
The pastry pays tribute to the pork floss buns her parents brought her during exhausting 18-hour work days, as well as the spring onion pancakes she loved after school. It layers hoisin sauce and sesame oil through flaky pastry before finishing with a generous topping of pork floss.
Liemantara adds a vegetarian twist with a mushroom danish layered with truffle-infused béchamel, while her sweet lineup features a black sesame and peanut butter crookie—a croissant-cookie hybrid that draws inspiration from the shaved ice desserts her family loved at Hong Kong-Taiwanese dessert chain Dessert Story.
From macarons to chiffon cakes
Macarons hold a special place at Jess Lemon, paying tribute to the delicate dessert that sparked Liemantara’s baking journey when she was 13.
Six flavours will be available, including Earl Grey and honey, alongside nostalgic creations inspired by her past work, such as caramel popcorn, which references her time at the now-closed CBD bakery, Esme.
Traditional favourites will sit alongside the more playful offerings, including almond and classic croissants and long cigar-shaped pains au chocolat filled with 48% Belgian dark chocolate.
Whole chiffon cakes, including Black Forest, will also be available for pre-order, a reminder of the hundreds of cakes Liemantara baked to help bring her bakery dream to life. She previously made almost 400 chiffon cakes using just two cake tins while working towards opening the venue.
A small bakery with big ambitions
Liemantara has transformed the Nunawading space into a warm, home-like bakery, placing the kitchen at its heart to keep the focus on freshly made pastries and takeaway creations. Coffee will flow from Mr Sally beans, while future plans include a drink inspired by the indulgence of gooey lava cake.
Liemantara’s journey has also continued beyond the bakery. In June 2026, she returned to MasterChef Australia for a Beat the Chef challenge, creating ginger threads with ginger ice cream, honey wafers and yoghurt foam for contestants to compete against.
The appearance highlighted the level of skill she has developed since her first appearance on the show, from teenage contestant to professional pastry chef. Jess Lemon is also set to expand with intimate dessert degustation experiences paired with tea later in the year, offering small-group dining sessions limited to six guests.
After years of planning, delays and thousands of pastries, Liemantara’s first solo venture has finally arrived, bringing a blend of technical pastry, Asian-inspired flavours and deeply personal stories to Melbourne’s east.
Key details
What: Jess Lemon
Where: 10 Market Street, Nunawading, Melbourne
When: Thursday–Sunday, 9am–2pm
