For many, Beirut’s burgeoning real estate market and break neck expansion means fresh condominium projects and faceless neighbourhoods exploding with equally impersonal shopping malls. For Lauren Meyer, Beirut means baking. Just in time for Valentine’s Day we caught up with this innovator of all things sweet to find what drove this Texas native to open her own bakery in Beirut.

Baking is not your fulltime job. So what is it that brought you to Beirut?
Well I’m a teacher. I came four years ago as a teacher. I was curious as to what it would be like to live in Lebanon. 

Why the name Lone Star Cake?
There were a lot of names obviously. It’s hard to pick a name for a business, especially when you’re living in a foreign country and you don’t know how things will be interpreted. If I pick something that’s French, people might assume that I speak French, which I don’t. If I pick something in Arabic there’s always a chance that I’ll mispronounce it or miss the root meaning of the word. So in the end, the name Lone Star Cake really spoke to me. It’s about where I’m from and who I am. And that’s a big part of why I love baking and how I learned to bake. Everyone in my family cooks or does something creative and my thing has always been cakes. I wanted to honour where I’m from. 

Beirut is known for its French influence. People take pastries seriously.
Well I think you definitely have to draw a distinction between what a really good bakery can do and what I do. There are really amazing French-style bakeries like Ladurée, Canale, and Gou that specialize in French pastries and cakes. They’re really classical and there’s a time and place for that but I really miss, living here, these richer, thicker layer cakes with butter cream frosting. Thicker heavier cakes which I think distinguish American cakes from their French counterparts. 

So what’s your mission statement?
I think that a lot of places go through this phase of wanting the biggest and best and the most well known and then the pendulum swings the other way and you want something that’s really obscure and unique. Business isn’t my strong suit and I haven’t done extensive market research in Lebanon but I do feel like there’s this craving for something that’s a little bit more genuine. That’s something that I can really relate to. I love giving someone something that I’ve created with my hands and watching them enjoy it. 

Lone Star Cake is up and running with Meyer taking orders online