About
Two cultures. One kitchen. Amsterdam.
Crombie Secret Bakes is a microbakery in Amsterdam Zuid. HK classics and American comfort food, made in small batches every week. Pickup only, by appointment. You heard about us from someone.
The story
It started with bad cookies.
When my husband and I got together, I started baking him cookies every week. They were, by any honest measure, not good. I kept baking them anyway — they brought him a sense of home, and that mattered more than whether they tasted right. Eventually, I had no choice but to get better.
Breads, pies, cakes followed. When we moved to Amsterdam, I started baking HK classics seriously — I wanted my two kids to grow up knowing what that food tastes like, what it means. So much of who we are is carried in what we eat. Culture doesn't live in museums. It lives in kitchens.
My first real client was a coffee cart. They needed baked goods, someone connected us, and that was the beginning. That's still how this works — no ads, no social media strategy, referrals only. I'm not trying to scale. I'm trying to bake well, and keep it that way.
Baking quiets my brain. The weighing, the folding, the waiting — there's a meditation in it that nothing else gives me.
But the reason I haven't stopped is this: I got tired of the tradeoffs. Everything optimized for cost has something missing — you just don't always know what. I wanted to go the other way. Optimize for health. Real ingredients, real food, nothing my family has to second-guess. It started as something meditative. It became a standard.
How we work
The rules we bake by.
Real ingredients. Local when we can.
Fresh eggs from local Dutch farmers. Organic butter. High-polyphenol Greek olive oil. We can't always guarantee fully organic, but that's the standard we hold ourselves to. If we wouldn't feed it to our kids, it doesn't go in the dough.
Small batch, every time.
We bake what we can sell that Sunday. Nothing sits. Nothing is frozen. If it's gone, it's gone.
No repeats.
Every drop is different. The menu rotates. You never get the same box twice.
Word of mouth only.
No ads. No social media. No influencers. You heard about us from someone who heard about us from someone. That's by design.
The duality
HK bakes hard. American bakes loud.
Hong Kong
Restrained. Precise. Technique-forward. HK bakes are subtle — the pineapple bun has no pineapple, the egg tart custard holds its shape without a single shortcut. The flavour lives in the texture.
American
Bold. Generous. Unapologetic. Brown butter, heavy cream, cinnamon sugar. American comfort food doesn't hide what it is — it shows up and it delivers.
“We bake both. That's the whole point.”
Our pledge
Real ingredients. No exceptions.
Fresh eggs from local Dutch farmers. Organic butter. High-polyphenol Greek olive oil — polyphenols are the quality marker that most oils skip. Organic vegetables when we can get them. We source local first, organic always where possible.
We can't always guarantee 100% organic across every ingredient. But that's the standard we hold ourselves to, and we won't lower it to cut costs. I won't buy anything I wouldn't feed my own kids. That's not a tagline. That's just how this works.
Community
Local. Always.
I'm based in Amsterdam Zuid. Pickup is at my home, by appointment. I'm open to collaborations with local farmers and businesses — the local economy works when we all help each other. If you're a café or business buying from me, your success matters to me. Let's work something out that works for both of us.
This stays a microbakery. Small, local, and made by hand. That's not a limitation — that's the point.
Custom bakes
If you can't eat it, we'll figure it out.
Food allergies & restrictions
If you have a food allergy, you already know: most baked goods aren't made with you in mind. I've spent years learning to work around it — dairy-free, egg substitutions, gluten adjustments — without losing what makes the thing worth eating. Tell me what you're working with. There's usually a version we can make.
Something you miss
A recipe from home. Something your grandmother made. A thing tied to a place you no longer live. If there's a bake you carry with you but can't make yourself — text me. I can't promise I'll get it right on the first try. But I'll try. Food is memory. Some things are worth chasing down.
“Text me and I'll see what I can do.”