1. What does baking mean to you?
Baking is my mental therapy and if you ask me I can go on a baking marathon.
2. How did you go about marketing?
Actually, all orders that I get are through my Instagram account and also through mouth-to-mouth marketing but it is completely through social media platforms.
3. In a day how many orders do you get?
Since its Christmas time I get around 6-7 orders in a day.
4. What do you think are the most important skills to have as a baker?
Patience, you need to have lot of patience. I never knew icing initially I would take 30 mins but now I finish it up with 10 mins. Also, I didn’t know how to do piping but now after so much of practice I learnt it. To top it all the customers in Belagavi are so good that what matters to them is quality and once I had piped a cake and before delivering it, the pipe just fell from one side but the customer was so kind he said, it’s okay madam, the taste is important. So yeah, we need to experiment and try out new things and not be afraid to do something new.
5. What inspires you to bake each day?
I love baking I just feel that lot of people should taste different types cakes and in Belagavi you have very limited range, it’s just the common white forest, chocolate cake and black forest. There are fruits but people don’t use fruits for cakes. It’s not commercial for me it’s just for the love of baking.
6. So how does your Christmas menu look like? What’s there on the list?
So, there is this traditional plum cake/rum cake, where you soak all the dry fruits in rum a month before and the reason behind this is that in North America and England as its extremely cold during the winter time, to keep their body warm they prepare rum infused fruits like a dessert to fight the cold winter nights. So here in my menu I have Rum cake (alcohol & non-alcohol version), The Great Pumpkin Cake, Spiced Carrot & Beet Cake, Ginger Bread Cake, Cookies and Brownies.
7. Where do you purchase different cake decorative items?
For the color part mostly I use vegetable colors, dry fruits are local, other stuff I buy from amazon and all the decorative items that you see are what my sister got from France so if some of my relatives or friends are travelling they get it for me. Also here in Belagavi, there is Pick N Munch place from where I pick my raw material stuff.
8. Your earliest memory of baking?
Yeah, I still remember very clearly I had made this Upside down banana loaf and my whole family was at home and when I got the freshly baked loaf out and sliced it my daughter was so excited that she ate it completely and that was the first time I ever saw her eat something by herself.
9. What’s price range of the cakes?
So compared to what you get outside the prices are little on the higher side because use whole wheat and brown sugar.
10. You take customized orders so which was the most interesting order that you received?
Once a customer wanted to surprise her younger sister who was about to get married so she called me morning at 12’clock and told me she wants cupcakes by 2’clock that is the busiest time of the day for me but I took the order because she wanted personal tags to be done on the cakes which I had never done before. So I freshly baked red velvet cupcakes and placed hand written messages on them that she shared with me and I was so happy when she received it because she was so thrilled at the sight of the cupcakes.
11. Your personal favorite recipe?
I had once baked this Chocolate-Mocha- Strawberry Cake, it was yum. I can eat it any day.
12. What’s your advice for people who want to start baking?
I think they shouldn’t look at it that it’s baking and I can’t do that, they should just try it. Not every baker has to take orders. So just bake for the pleasure and experience of it. Bake some nice muffins and cupcakes for family and friends and spread the love.