Our story
It all started at Mam’s kitchen table.
I grew up in the countryside in Westmeath, in a house where Mam baked our bread and treats. As children, we thought we were missing out because there were no chocolate bars in the cupboard, just a homemade Madeira bun or her speciality apple cake. It was only later that I realised how lucky we were. The smell of her apple tart coming out of the oven on a Sunday afternoon will always mean home to me.
I was always collecting recipes, cutting pictures out of magazines and flicking through cookbooks. I’d announce to Mam that I was making something, glance at the picture and get started. Following the instructions wasn’t really my thing. I’d say a prayer and hope for the best, then gather everyone around to taste whatever I’d come up with.
But baking took on a different meaning during a very dark time in my life. I was struggling with my mental health and had lost so much of myself. With professional help, my family’s support and Mam never leaving my side, I slowly began finding my way back.
Making cakes gave me a challenge I wanted to get up for. There was a recipe to try, a decoration to figure out or something I could make for someone else. It gave me something to talk about beyond how I was feeling. It didn’t make everything better overnight, but slowly, there were more good days.
Friends and neighbours started asking me to make their cakes. I spent anything I earned on equipment and stayed up late teaching myself, taking over more and more of Mam’s kitchen in the process.
I didn’t start with a plan to build a business. I loved baking, creating and bringing people together to try my food, and it was helping me feel like myself again. Mam was there for all of it: the mess, the worry, the little successes and, eventually, the day I signed the lease for my first shop.
That’s where the story of 2210 began.
Our journey
2010
2010 · Where it all began
Mam’s kitchen table was where I experimented, collected recipes and discovered how much I loved making something for other people. My family were my taste testers, whether they wanted to be or not. I had no idea those hours in the kitchen would become the beginning of all this.
2013
2013 · The cake that changed everything
My nephew Conor wanted a John Deere tractor cake for his third birthday. I hadn’t a clue how to make one, but I took over Mam’s kitchen table for three days, with his toy tractor as my model and YouTube as my teacher.
At a time when so much felt difficult, I had a challenge I wanted to take on. More cakes followed, and gradually there were more good days. Conor’s birthday 2.2.10 would also become the inspiration for the name 2210.
2015
2015 · 2210 Patisserie is born
At 22, I spotted a café for lease at 17 Mount Street in Mullingar. Soon afterwards, Mam sat beside me as I signed the lease. No business plan, just a love for baking and an “excuse my language, but fuck it—what’s the worst that can happen?” attitude.
We scrubbed, cleared out the place and stretched a very small budget. Mam and I watched YouTube videos on how to lay a floor, we bought a few basic secondhand tins and I brought over my cake equipment from home. Then we opened our little pink bakery (which was actually blue for the first year :)).
I could bake, but running a shop was a whole new world. Some days, only two customers came through the door. I said yes to every order and figured out how to make it afterwards. I was exhausted and often struggling to pay the bills, but I loved being in that kitchen.
2017
2017 · Mam by my side
There was a point when the hours and the bills weren’t adding up. I was taking extra kitchen work in a local business on my days off just to keep the bakery open, and I began planning to close up and travel. As much as I loved baking and being in that kitchen, I couldn’t work so much and so hard and still not be able to pay my bills.
Then Mam was diagnosed with breast cancer, and everything changed. My plans shifted, and the bills were no longer my main concern. The bakery stayed open, and I did everything I could to make it work because, while she was getting treatment, I wanted to be by her side, just as she had been for me. Working for myself allowed me to do this, but I had to make it work now more than ever. I needed to be in a kitchen doing something I loved to get through this time while I watched my best friend fight for her life, but I also needed the flexibility to be with her and bring her to appointments.
We talked, laughed and cried together. Those days with her became some of the most precious of my life.
2019
2019 · Growing next door
Four years after opening, we moved into number 19, right next door. I was so delighted with myself: three floors, a bigger kitchen and a café with room to seat 26 people. I honestly thought we had found our forever home. How could we ever need more space than this?
The café was busy, people were travelling to see us and the wedding cake diary was filling months in advance. I was still in the kitchen mostly on my own, sometimes with family or part-time help, but I loved the business. It was everything I’d worked for. It also meant longer hours and more responsibility, with a team now depending on the business too. I loved the hustle and bustle of the café, and once it shut, I’d start the night shift, getting cakes made and decorated for the following day. I was so driven. I just felt so privileged that this was what I got to do every day!
2020
2020 · From our bakery to your doorstep
Eight months later, Covid hit. Orders were cancelled, events disappeared and I refunded cakes while wondering how I would keep going. I went home and cried.
Once the first panic settled, I went back into the kitchen. I had been building a new website in the weeks before, so I used it to start working out how to send my baking by post. After two weeks of testing recipes, researching packaging and figuring things out, I launched four products. Sixty boxes sold out. It was back to basics. I was working on my own and couldn’t be in contact with anyone at the time because I was Mam’s carer and needed to keep her safe.
Soon, it was hundreds of orders each week. Mam and my sisters were handwriting labels. I was baking, cutting, wrapping and packing boxes of brownies through the night, and we were learning everything as we went—and I mean everything! Alongside it all, Mam was going through treatment, so keeping her safe was always on my mind. It was an incredibly difficult time, but the support we received is something I’ll never forget.
2022
2022 · Sweet Therapy, my first cookbook
I had always said I’d have a cookbook before I turned 30. It was one of those dreams you say out loud without knowing how it could ever happen.
Then an email arrived from Hachette. I was so overwhelmed that I rang my sister Joan and asked her to check whether it was real. After all those years collecting recipes and baking at home, I was going to have a book of my own.
Sweet Therapy came out three months before my 30th birthday. Sharing the recipes was special. Sharing the story behind them was much more personal, but it mattered to me that people knew where it had all begun. I honestly didn’t know my story would reach so many people.
Again, I was learning as I went. A PR campaign came with the book, and my very first interview was in the hot seat with Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show on a Friday night, speaking about my story and my first number-one bestselling book! It all felt like a massive dream, but I was straight back to the kitchen doing what I love. The batches were just getting a lot bigger with our new following!
2023
2023 · Hello, Dublin
Opening in Powerscourt Townhouse brought 2210 beyond Mullingar and into Dublin. There is something very special about seeing the name that began with my little nephew’s birthday above another door. It was another step I could never have pictured in those early days.
It was initially only meant to be a pop-up for a few weeks, a way to bring 2210 to Dublin and ease the long queues that had been forming outside our Mullingar store. But with the demand there and so much love for our Dublin shop, we stayed.
We’re still in Powerscourt Townhouse today. What began with just cakes has grown into a bakery serving delicious coffee too, open seven days a week.
2025
2025 · Good Together
Who knew I had another book in me? :) This one I wanted to enjoy. I wanted to take my time and include some recipes I hadn’t included in my first book. This book was all about bringing people together!
While I was writing it, we were given the heartbreaking news that there were no more treatments available to Mam and she only had a number of months left with us. It broke me. This book was written with blood, sweat and a LOT of tears.
My second cookbook, Good Together, arrived—another book with my name on the cover and recipes from my kitchen making their way into yours. I still think about the girl collecting recipes at home, telling everyone she’d have a cookbook one day. She would have had a lot to say about this!
2025
2025 · Our dream home
As I was writing my second book, I had also signed the lease for one of my biggest projects to date: 50 Pearse Street, a 10,500-square-foot old bank building in the heart of Mullingar that had been derelict for a number of years. It needed so much work.
I remember the first day Mam and I went down to view it, and she told me to go for it. I didn’t need to know how much it was going to cost or how we were going to make it happen. After that, I just knew we would. And so we did.
I’d thought our last shop was the biggest we’d ever need, but this one has become our home. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it was such an enjoyable one. And I’m not going to lie: after putting so much time, energy and effort into every single detail, I remember feeling almost disappointed on the day we opened the doors that people were going to come in and judge it. I just loved it. I loved the whole journey.
I’ll always look back on that summer in 2025 as the best summer of my life. I got to spend so much time with Mam because she was in good health and wasn’t on any treatment. I had just handed in my book, and I was planning to move into my dream premises.
Then we opened our new home at 50 Pearse Street in Mullingar. From a kitchen table to a little pink shop, then next door, Dublin and now here—it’s a lot to take in when I stop and think about it.
There is so much work behind each move that people don’t always see. But opening those doors and seeing people come in makes me remember why I wanted a place of my own in the first place.
Along the way
Along the way · Our online community
Putting my face on Instagram was terrifying. I recorded my first videos sitting in the car at a hurling match, watched them back and nearly talked myself out of posting them.
Eventually, I pressed share, switched off my phone and tried not to think about it. From then on, I shared the cakes, the long nights, the busy days, the disasters, the rebuild, Mam’s appointments and bits of everyday life, along with raising awareness and funds for important campaigns.
I never saw Instagram, or Snapchat in the early days, as a marketing tool. I just saw it as a way to share what was going on in my life with my friends, and over time, those followers became my friends too.
People started following along, encouraging me and coming to visit. During those late nights working on my own, it meant so much to know so many of you were there. The support we’ve built over the years and everything we’ve been through together mean more to me than a marketing campaign ever could.
Today
Today · More than a bakery
Mam is no longer by my side. She passed away in February 2026. She was there for me long before there was a business, a team or a book, and it’s impossible to tell the story of 2210 without telling you about her. She was my number one supporter, and I wouldn’t be writing this today without her!
Today, 2210 is a team of amazing people who put so much into everything we do, from baking and celebration cakes to brunch, supper clubs and bringing people together. I’m proud of what we’ve built, and grateful to my family, our team and everyone who has supported us.
There have been chapters I never expected, both wonderful and heartbreaking. Through them all, baking has remained something I love.
And it will always bring me back to Mam’s kitchen table.
To be continued…
Una x
The meaning behind 2210?
Named after my nephew Conor
Conor, my now not-so-little nephew, was born on 2/2/10. I made my first cake for him all those years ago at Mam’s kitchen table, with no idea that it would be the start of all this. His birthday gave 2210 its name, and that first cake gave me the beginning of a story I’m still writing.
From our kitchen
@2210_patisserie
