People bake for many reasons. For Michelle Tan, one of those reasons is instant, or at least speedy, gratification. That’s why she’s learnt to bake canelés, those notoriously difficult to master petite Bordeaux pastries with a crackly caramelised crust and custardy centres. She also taught herself to make the filled, fudgy dark chocolate brownies made popular by Bundt by The Backyard Bakers, which people used to queue up for as early as 6am at their store in Clarke Quay. “I wanted to be self-sufficient,” she says with shy humour.

The 28-year-old graduated with a Diploma in Culinary and Catering Management from Temasek Polytechnic and until recently, was a hobbyist baker. She works full-time for a digital airport platform as its APAC Operations Manager.

“Michelle likes to know that when she craves for something, she can find it or make it quickly,” says her boyfriend and business partner Qing Da Cheong with obvious affection. QD, as he is better known, is a trained barista and the Sales and Relationship Manager for The Populus Café’s wholesale coffee arm. Together, they started Levelled.sg in early June, a home-based business selling limited box sets of caneles and brownies.

The couple, who've been together since their university days, are so passionate about cafes and coffee that they travelled to Sydney on a yearlong Work and Holiday Visa in 2018. Michelle found a full-time gig at Bourke Street Bakery, widely regarded as one of Sydney’s best, making sandwiches and salads in the kitchen while QD worked part-time as a barista at popular cafes such as Brewtown and Goodfields Eatery.

While in Sydney, Michelle discovered her love for canelés (pronounced “kah-nuh-leh”) — delicate French pastries with a crackly caramelised crust and spongey, custardy insides. She loved them so much that she was determined to master them so that she could have them whenever she felt like it.

“I did a lot of research online and tried recipes from various cookbooks. I did a lot of tweaking and took parts of what I liked from all the different recipes,” she says. “It took about a year for me to perfect.” And perfect them she did. Her canelés are exemplary, with luscious custardy insides enrobed by a thin, crackly, burnished crust.

Working from home during the Circuit Breaker meant the couple had more time to bake, which eventually turned into a small business. “Our friends encouraged us to start this because they wanted to order the things that Michelle bakes, so we thought let’s just try and see where it leads,” says QD. “Our expansion plan is for the far future. I want my own café space with Michelle’s bakes and stuff, but we’ll see where this goes.”

Every week, they make about 36 pastry boxes, each filled with three caneles and four brownies. Because canelé batter requires a 48-hour rest in the fridge, they mix it on Wednesday and Thursday for baking on Saturday and Sunday when they personally deliver the orders to their customers. They are currently sourcing for a delivery partner and when they find one, will begin charging a delivery fee. “Baking and delivering ourselves is a little crazy,” says QD.

You get an elegantly packaged box of four brownies and three caneles.

Textbook perfect, with a moist, eggy centre robustly perfumed with vanilla and dark rum. Eat them fresh and their crusts have a lovely thin crunch, with rich caramelly notes. Otherwise, a quick toast in the oven will return the crunch right back to their burnished skins. Impressive.

The same textures as the vanilla canelé, but deeply flavoured with good-quality jasmine green tea powder that saturates the pastry with its floral, almost seaweed-like notes. The tea’s delicate umami lilts are a nice foil to the sweet pastry.

Made with 70 percent chocolate and cocoa powder from Valrhona, this dark, velvety number is just the right balance of bittersweet and like a chocolate lava cake in canelé form. Cloaked in the same light, crackly crust that is somehow sweeter than the matcha and vanilla variations.

All the brownies, made with Lescure butter from France and 70 percent chocolate and cocoa powder from Valrhona, are as dark and rich as they look. Because they are deeply flavoured and barely sweetened, their sweet fillings don’t come across as cloying when you eat them. This peanut butter and jelly number is a fine reflection of how Michelle and QD are particular about the ingredients they use. The thick peanut butter from New Zealand has a lovely pronounced flavour that is brightened by a dab of tart raspberry jam.

Everything delicious you’d expect from a Nutella brownie. A generous mound of the hazelnut spread in the centre, a silky bittersweet brownie casing, and chopped, toasted hazelnuts on top for added crunch.

This is the sweetest of the lot, thanks to the Ovalmaltine spread (Ovaltine in spread form) mottled with crunchy little malt granules. Again, the barely sweet brownies provide a happy balance of flavours.

The thick, rich cookie butter in these brownies tipped it over the edge for us. It is so thick and pronounced that it overwhelms the dark deliciousness of the brownie itself.

One of the best banana cakes we’ve tried over the Circuit Breaker (and boy, did we try a lot of them). Soft and fluffy with a light, loose crumb, this one is creamy with bananas and mildly sweet. For an additional $5, it comes with a jar of caramel sauce that you can pipe over before serving.

Excellent quality bakes from a home kitchen. These boxes of six pastries are good value for $39, though the price will change when they find a delivery partner. Michelle and QD say the selection will eventually change to include other sweets like chocolate tarts, which they are now experimenting with.

Bake sales open at 8pm every Tuesday. To order, message them on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/levelled.sg/.