Baking Beauties

Looking at bakeries stocking up cakes, one would imagine that baking cakes at home for Christmas was a fading tradition. Far from it, we find youngsters taking a delight in baking, and have even been successfully running kitchen factories, catering to the needs of their friends, families and acquaintances.For example, there’s 25-year-old Anna Raju who bakes delicious cakes from her kitchen. For this kindergarten teacher, baking has always been a passion, she says. “I think it must have been how the house smelt whenever my mom baked a cake that got me so interested in it,” she says. While most tend to bake plum cakes for Christmas, Anna makes a variety of cup cakes in flavours ranging from vanilla to chocolate to red velvet. Also, the cakes have designs of stars, Xmas tree and santa caps.Anna’s cakes are so tasty, that she soon started getting corporate orders as well, which she bakes herself from her Kacheripady home. So what’s the secret behind her success? “The only thing I take care is not to cook when I am in a bad mood. I think how one feels is very important and adds a lot of value to the taste of the food,” she says.Ask her if baking cakes has gone out of fashion, and Anna says that the trend is quite the opposite, with many younger people baking their own cakes these days. “There’s a lot of hype surrounding baking, but it is actually one of the easiest things to do. Once people realise that, they really take to it,” she says.Also, she thinks there is a premium to home-made cakes during Christmas. “Many households bake cakes themselves,and those who cannot, hunt for places where they can get home-made cakes. You have to appreciate that effort,” she says.Much like Anna, Liya Mathew also bakes cakes and pies along with her father and younger brother from home, and together they run the Kahawa Bistro in the city. “Both my parents have been excellent cooks, and my dad, being very well-travelled used to make a variety of dishes. I think I got my passion from there,” says Liya, who is in her late 20s.From pineapple pies to chocolate fudge cake to molten lava cake, there’s a whole range of delectables she makes. “Rather than selling cakes in kilos, I’ve realised it is better to serve them in smaller quantities. That is what they do abroad. You can experiment more that way, and try new things. That trend is slowly coming here too,” she says.For Christmas this year, Liya has plum cup cakes and ginger bread man cookies. The cup cake of a sizeable amount is priced at Rs 30 each.25-year-old Ann Rekha is another cake enthusiast who runs a very successful kitchen factory, ‘Little Wonder’ from her Rajaji Road residence. It was her husband who goaded her to run it as a business, and now Ann makes a great variety of cakes, from vanilla to butterscotch to chocolate, with edible Christmas decoratives.The key attraction is the custom-made cakes she makes on order. Many of them are so good to look at that the buyer feels a pang to cut through it. “That is the biggest compliment to me, when they tell me that they don’t have the heart to cut it. This happened when I made the ‘Angry Birds’ mobile game on a cake. The people I made it for were delighted,” she recollects.While the passion for cake-making is there, Ann says it is really the art involved in it that draws her to it. “Whenever I travel abroad, I see the patterns and designs there and try to bring it to Kochi,” she says. All of them find tremendous encouragement from near and dear ones, amply demonstrated by the orders that pour in for their cakes. Naturally, all three are delighted with this sweet smell of success.