As pastry science and techniques advance, desserts at top restaurants have gone deconstructed and conceptual, but don’t expect to see the likes of tapioca spheres, chocolate discs, passion fruit fluff or pistachio sponge when Hawaii’s first Magnolia Bakery Cafe opens its doors. Instead, look for classic desserts and pastries.

Magnolia’s chief baking officer, Bobbie Lloyd, who created the menu and desserts for the bakery and restaurant, was in town at Y. Hata to test recipes she concocted in New York, making sure they would work with Hawaii’s humidity.

“Everything’s turning out perfect,” she said. “Hawaii’s hot, but so is New York in the summer.”

She’s a fan of vintage dessert recipes, and her Instagram feed indicates most people feel the same way. She said dessert lovers, bakers and bloggers tend to post images of old-fashioned cakes, pies and cupcakes on social media.

“You never see something on a platform, deconstructed or things rising 6 inches above the table. There’s a place for that, but that’s not what I do,” said Lloyd. “I’m from the Midwest suburbs of Chicago. My mom was a baker, and back in the 1950s and ’60s, you wouldn’t dream of showing up at someone’s home without a cake. My mom always had a cake or cookies or pie, ready to go.”

Lloyd inherited the baking gene, working in the kitchen alongside her mother, and going on to receive formal chef’s training at Boston’s Modern Gourmet Cooking School. Her passion for the kitchen arts led her to open her own restaurant, American Accent, in 1980s Boston.

“The concept was, if you saw it on the table, we made it. We made our own ketchup, pastas, breads, spice blends, jams and jellies. It was difficult to make money that way, but it was such a good idea that I had to do it.”

Like many startups, the restaurant was undercapitalized, and she advises wannabe restaurateurs to make sure they have enough funding to last a year.

She went on to work as a private chef for Calvin Klein, then service manager at Union Square Cafe before joining Magnolia Bakery in 2007. It was a good fit. Magnolia Bakery had been founded in 1996 with the idea of serving classic American baked goods, opening in New York’s West Village. The little bakery grew a local following, but won international attention from appearances on “Sex and the City” and other New York-based TV programs and films.

Magnolia has since expanded its business worldwide, and the Hawaii operation will encompass a stand-alone bakeshop for takeout business as well as the brand’s first sit-down, full-service restaurant in the United States.

Patrons will be able to choose from a variety of cafe menu items, including egg skillets, red velvet pancakes, pulled pork biscuit sandwiches and seasonal salads, as well as Magnolia’s renowned handmade desserts.

The cafe brings Lloyd full circle to her chef’s roots, as she insists, “I’m not a pastry chef and never call myself that. I’m more of a home-style baker, but I approach my work like a pastry chef.”

Her title of chief baking officer came from an encounter at London’s Heathrow Airport, when an immigration official looking at her travel papers saw her title of president of Magnolia Bakery, and sniffed, “No one’s the president of a bakery.”

“And I thought, ‘She’s right!’ It’s way too serious, so I knew it was time to change that.”

In creating the menu, Lloyd transformed some of Magnolia’s most loved cakes and cupcakes into other forms. The Hummingbird, a Southern classic that seems to be made for Hawaii because of its combination of tropical pineapple and bananas, with pecans, will be available in pancake form. Its sweet cream cheese icing will become a cream syrup.

Lloyd had help getting to know the local palate from Magnolia Hawaii’s local-born and raised executive chef, Jonas Low, who’s returned home after working at Magnolia’s Lebanon location.

Low attended Leeward Community College before studying pastry at the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Ore., and going on to work at Gary Danko in San Francisco. Coming home “just worked out for me,” he said. “I’m like a lot of the generation of local chefs that have traveled out, seen what is out there, got the training and is bringing it back home.

“My role is making sure that what goes out of our kitchen is consistent with the New York brand.”

Though with a few local twists.

Lloyd said she was happy when she heard of Hawaii’s love of pork, which inspired two additions to the menu: a pulled pork skillet of creamy grits, jalapeno and cheddar with the pork on top; and a pulled pork biscuit sandwich.

She’s left wiggle room in the menu for Low to play with local and seasonally available ingredients to keep things interesting. A kale salad might incorporate asparagus and peaches in the summer, then switch to butternut squash in the fall.

She’d long desired to add breakfast and meal service at Magnolia, knowing that “people love breakfast, and they like eggs all day.”

If they’re lucky, New York might follow in Honolulu’s footsteps next year.

Reach Nadine Kam at nkam@staradvertiser.com.