Crack Bakery apple pies are selling like hotcakes in Canberra

But, in fact, Crack Bakery couldn't be more wholesome if it tried.

Its speciality is apple pies and they are, literally, selling like hotcakes.

The powerhouses behind the bakery are former Cafe Patissez owners, the Petridis family, who also invented the FreakShake. Mic. Drop. These guys have the golden touch.

Daughter Anna and mum Gina have been selling 200 of Gina's special-recipe apple pies a week, each one piled high with 1.2 kilograms of Granny Smith apples. And the demand for the pies is insatiable.

"It's been a bit of a whirlwind," Gina said, with a laugh. "It's been insane. But I'm loving it."

When the family sold their iconic cafe in Manuka last year to local couple Jake and Lucy Yu, the plan was to enjoy some downtime, with some vague thought to selling the pies online.

But what was supposed to be a little side hustle, has become a phenomenon to rival the FreakShake, with stock selling out almost as soon as it is posted online, usually Monday at 6.30pm, at crackbakery.com

"Then it's just the quick and the dead," Anna said.

"They are usually sold out within two to three minutes. It's psycho. The amount of people who message me saying, 'I missed out again! I've been trying for weeks!'."

Anna and Gina - "Mumma G" - were originally cooking the pies from their home. But last weekend, they moved into a small commercial kitchen in Wanniassa, to increase the capacity.

They have temporarily taken over the kitchen of another cult favourite, Thomas Heinrich's The Table, which is in the process of relocating to The Truffle Farm in the Majura Valley. The kitchen is in a building that once boasted the Rebels bikies' clubhouse, although they are long gone, replaced by a woodworking school.

From the kitchen, mum and daughter and now one employee are baking apple pies and pumpkin pies.

They will be doing special orders of meat pies and Christmas treats such as huge pavlovas. Their goal is to now sell 300 apple pies a week.

"I didn't expect it to become as big as it is," Anna said.

Pick-up of the pies was from the Down Town Milk Bar in Manuka, run by Anna's uncle, hence all those queues you've been seeing. But there were so many orders the family couldn't transport them all by car. So now pick-up will be Saturday mornings direct from the kitchen in Wanniassa.

And, on cue, the customers started arriving on Saturday to get their hands on the good stuff, including Xanthie, who did not want to give her last name, who was picking up a pie for her father-in-law's birthday.

"This is my third one," she said. "It's the crust. The crust is the best bit."

Freya Kristiansen, of Kingston, hit the jackpot when she managed to snag three pies in the online orders, as well as some "liquid crack", cream for the pies.

"I got online straight on 6.30pm and by 6.35pm, they were all gone. They said I was really lucky to get three pies," she said.

So what does make the pies so special? The mum and daughter say piling the pies high with apples is key. Only use Granny Smith apples. Gina has a secret recipe for her pastry, that cracks when you break the pie, and uses a hand-held apple slinky machine to core the apples, the only thing that works well, she reckons. With so many people now after the pies. And she makes the pies with love.

"All this food, I made for my kids when they were growing up," she said.

Gina laughs about how she wanted a quiet life after running Cafe Patissez.

"But after a couple of weeks, I was stressed because there was no stress," she said.

Anna is planning next year to open Crack Bakery as a full-time concern in another, still secret location and also has another business up her sleeve.

"It's a bit hush-hush. But it's very cool," she said.

Oh and she's also getting married on November 30 in Jervis Bay. Nothing like keeping busy.

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