When Flinders Street Station celebrated its 170th birthday last week, the milestone was marked with cupcakes being handed out to commuters as they passed through the famous landmark.
The chocolate and vanilla cupcakes were especially designed for the occasion, but rather than being the work of some celebrity chef, Metro trains turned to a 20 year William Angliss student from Newport to bake them instead.
“It started around August last year,” said Harrison Archbold of when his meteoric rise from cooking student to culinary star began.
“We had made hot cross buns that day (in class) and I would usually give half to my brother, but that day he cancelled on me,” said Mr Archbold who suddenly found himself travelling home to on the train with two dozen freshly baked buns and no one to give them to.
“And then I just decided on a whim to stop by Newport station and drop off a dozen.”
Unsurprisingly, staff appreciated a batch of buns being delivered out of the blue and so began a weekly ritual of Mr Archbold dropping off whatever sugary goodness he’d been cooking up in class at Newport station on his way home.
After a few months of feeding staff everything from strawberry champagne cake, to pastries, tarts and high end specialty cakes, word of Mr Archbold’s cooking skills spread around, first through Metro’s internal communication and social media teams, then onto ABC radio where 774 breakfast host, Sammy J, presented him with the 2023 Melby award.
Metro’s executive director corporate affairs, Clare Abbott, said when planning a celebration for 170 years of Flinders Street Station, getting Mr Archbold to do the catering was the obvious choice.
“We are so impressed by him. We couldn’t think of anyone better to create custom cupcakes,” Ms Abbott said.
Mr Archbold said he made 320 cupcakes for the occasion, half chocolate and half vanilla and all with Italian meringue butter cream.
“They all got eaten,” he said stating the obvious.
While still occasionally making deliveries to Newport, Mr Archbold is now focussed on finishing the final year of his patisserie and commercial cookery course at William Angliss.
He then hopes to embark on culinary career that’s unlikely to see him cooking in train stations again.
“I definitely want to travel and work in France,” he said.
“That’s really the homeland of patisserie.”
