Graham Herterich: ‘I’m nervous about stepping out from behind The Cupcake Bloke’

If you have the surname Herterich, and live in Ireland, there’s a strong likelihood that you belong to the family, originally from Stuttgart, who opened pork butcher shops across Ireland, beginning in the mid-1920s. “If you ever meet a Herterich in Ireland, we’re related,” says Graham Herterich, whose great-grandfather George went into business in Naas in 1926, and whose 11 children became the foundation of the Herterich butchering empire.

Graham did not follow his father Paul, who had a butcher shop in Athy, Co Kildare, into the meat trade. Instead he trained as a chef, before segueing into a two-year stint studying for the priesthood. Today, he is better known as The Cupcake Bloke, running a wholesale bakery, and a retail outlet in Rialto, Dublin.

Next week, he publishes his first book, Bake, a collection of sweet and savoury recipes, both traditional versions and others reinterpreted in a more modern way. The project came about when Herterich was inspired by a podcast by the GastroGays, Patrick Hanlon and Russell Alford, in which they discussed the writing of their book, Hot Fat, with publisher and editor Kristin Jensen.

“I was listening to it down at the bakery at four o’clock in the morning, and she went through this checklist of what she was looking for in an author. I was like, I think she’s talking about me; I can tick all these boxes. So that morning, I sent her a DM [direct message] on Instagram. I think that was a Saturday and on the Monday afternoon we spoke and she loved the idea for the book.”

It is a beautifully produced publication, with some really original design elements that are the work of Jane Matthews, gorgeous photographs by Jo Murphy, and a cleverly collated collection of recipes that will appeal to novice and experienced bakers. Herterich radiates the passion and enthusiasm of a first-time author but there is one thing he is slightly concerned about. “I am so nervous about stepping out from behind The Cupcake Bloke. Very few people know my name.” Fewer still know the interesting backstory that brought him to this point in life.

“I trained as a chef with Cert in Waterford. Then I decided that I had another calling in life and went off and tried to be a priest.” He spent two years in a Carmelite community house in Ballinteer. “I had done what was my novitiate and my first year of philosophy. But I just knew long term it wasn’t for me. I was questioning my faith and my dedication to it. So that’s why I decided it really wasn’t for me. But I don’t regret those two years at all.”

Having made the decision to leave religious life, Herterich needed what he describes as “head space” and booked a last-minute one-week sun holiday in Morocco. Four weeks later, he was still there, having abandoned the beaches in favour of travelling the country, soaking up the sights and smells and jumping into new experiences, such as working as a goat herd for a few days. “I just disappeared for a couple of weeks. That’s where my love of food came back and I really developed a love of spices and finding new ingredients.”

Not long after his return from Morocco, Herterich met wine buyer Daithí Kelleher, who is now his husband and business partner in The Cupcake Bloke. “He allows me to be creative. I do the baking and he does absolutely everything else, the wages, the HR, the IT, the deliveries.” Herterich’s brother Pappy, who has Down syndrome, also works at the bakery’s production site at the Spade Enterprise Centre in Dublin 7, travelling into the city three days a week from his home in Maynooth. The book is dedicated to both men.

The Rialto shop is managed by his niece, Ellen Doogue, one of a big group of women who Herterich says have been instrumental in shaping his career, including his mother Ann, grandmothers Granny Daisy and Granny Flynn, and Aunt Mary. “When writing the book it really came home to me how sharing women are when it comes to food; as in, generous to me in loads of ways.” Two Irish food writers, Ali Dunworth and Dee Laffan, have also contributed to the book, with Dunworth writing about traditional Irish baking and Laffan writing about Herterich’s use of unusual spices and ingredients in the context of “the modern landscape of Irish food”.

Surprisingly, there are only two cupcake recipes in The Cupcake Bloke’s book, one for what he calls “Mammy buns”, and their reinvention as a tahini and black sesame cupcake. So have they had their day, or do the oversized, lavishly iced buns still have a place in a 2022 Irish bakery? “It’s surprising. We’re a little shop in Rialto and we still sell a lot of cupcakes here. Ten years ago, they were everywhere, but there’s so few places [that] do them now, so we get people who will travel because they want to get a box of cupcakes.”

Next month, on Sundays, October 9th and 16th, Bake by The Cupcake Bloke will stage a pop-up afternoon tea at The Old Yard, in Castledermot, Co Kildare. “I’ll be serving some of the savoury elements and sweet elements from the book and getting a chance to talk to people. I’m going to have a brack trolley, where people can try all different types of brack.” But before then, he is off to Lourdes, fulfilling a lifelong family tradition of helping with the religious pilgrimages. “That’s my break in the middle of the madness.”

Bake: Traditional Irish Baking with Modern Twists by Graham Herterich is published by Nine Bean Rows (€25)