Meet the game changers of the City's baking scene

Published in Varthaman, Edition II, August 2019

It is 2:45 PM; Friday. We sit in a charmingly decked garage in a Gokulam home. Brumous skies. Little wafts of cupcakes baking. Laughter. Looking back through rose-coloured glasses. More little wafts of cupcakes. Warmth. And somewhere amidst it all, a little fairy's touch.

Long gone are the days when fancy looking cakes and desserts were confined to glossy papers and screens or roughly a hundred and fifty kilometers away in Bengaluru. From precious looking cupcakes to jaw dropping entremets, fondant cakes to patisseries (with names that need a little help pronouncing), all is now available in Mysuru with just a phone call. And at the other end of the call are home bakers.

Aromas, underlined with passion, which had for so long lingered amidst four walls, have opened many windows, literally or through social media, diffusing into the city and welcoming back with it a crowd of people, curious to explore the newly revamped dessert landscape of the city. From the past five years, home baking has been on a steady rise and it is slowly but surely transfiguring the sweet side of Mysuru.

It is 1:30 PM; Friday. In a home that welcomes you not only with its grace but with a smile.

"I only take orders for challenging cakes", says Mrs. Mitra of Muffin County fame, as she shows us her latest creation, 'Sundri', a bust cake. You need to see it to believe it. Even if you do, it is still hard to convince yourself that it is an edible masterpiece that is hand sculpted by her. You can see how much of a perfectionist she is. Attention to detail is as much her forte as she claims sugar art is. She is self-taught. Having grown up baking, it was in 2015 that she decided to monetize her passion. She now receives orders not only from Mysuru but also Madikeri, Nanjangud and even cities on the other end of the state like Davangere and Bellary. No cake is impossible for Mrs. Mitra!

Home baking, for almost all home bakers, has stemmed from passion. Passion to create, experiment and learn. Most of them are predominantly self-taught; while some have attended a few workshops to polish their skills, some have even gone on to earn degrees and diplomas from some of the finest culinary schools in the world! With being self-taught, comes a different type of gratification. A pride that it is a little more you and a little less commercial pruning. Self-taught or otherwise, what connect them all at the end of the day are their cakes and the passion they share for baking.

4:00 PM; Monday; White Lantern, Jayalakshmipuram. City views and chilly monsoon breeze. A slow intermittent drizzle. A hazy humbug of traffic far below. We talk baking science.

PrakruthiDonthi of Crumbs and Bakes is a professionally trained baker. She went to Lavonne Academy, Bengaluru, almost a year after completing her degree, which she spent researching and improving her baking skills. "What they teach in an academy can never be paralleled or self-taught. They not only teach you the science of baking but also vital entrepreneurial skills that are required to make a business out of it. I learnt things like how to manage my stock, my refrigerator etc. Something I would not even have thought of had I not gone there. Their exhaustive course prepares you for everything." "But if you make the cut on your own, teaching yourself online, that's fantastic too!" she adds as an afterthought.

An avid animal lover, she wants to, one day, open a pet friendly café to educate people, spread awareness and advocate against animal abuse. However, Mysuru is not ready for posh dessert oriented cafes selling patisserie yet. Maybe it will be in four or five years down the lane, she opines.

For Prakruthi, what sets home bakers apart from bakeries is the care and effort they take to make each order. The best ingredients go into these delectable delights. They personally go to the markets to buy everything from fruits to dairy to chocolates to fresh flowers that is required to make the stellar cakes. Hygiene is another important aspect that is checked green by home bakers. Every single cake is custom made and freshly baked. "You give your customers a product that you would want to eat without thinking twice" says Prakruthi. However, convincing customers the pricing of the cakes is an ordeal most home bakers confessed they faced on a regular basis.

5:30 PM; Monday; Café Coffee Day; Last few streaks of sunlight slanting through glass windows and an approaching dusk. The city slowly reviving after an outburst of rain. In the warmth from the lingering aroma of freshly brewed coffee, I am in conversation with Harshitha, another home baker, the magician behind Cravings.

"I have always been passionate about baking. It works sort of how music relives stress. Baking is like music to me." After being prodded on by her friends and family, Harshitha started her home baking business a little over a year ago. Her cakes are a hundred percent vegetarian, catering largely to the eggless cakes fan base.

Also part of her fan base, or any home bakers' fan base for that matter, is the youth. "I think out of ten cakes, I would have baked three or four for a family occasion while the rest are for birthday parties, bachelorettes and the likes." The youth are a very enterprising target audience to cater to. They are more adventurous with their palates and designs, and make great marketing instruments, owing to their highly digitally connected lives. This is the demographic that has honed the café culture in Mysuru, that is finally thriving after ages of sluggish business, and it is safe to say that, this is the demographic that will help the home bakers burgeon as well.

Another important aspect of home baking is keeping up with the trends. Just like any industry, the baking industry also sees a huge inflow and outflow of trends, a large part of it streaming in from the internet, a platform that unites the entire world. France and Russia are now literally a click and a spoonful away. After all, is it this fluidity and volatility that makes any creative field interesting.

"Naked cakes are my favourite", gushes Harshitha. "They are easy to bake, easy to make and look fabulous once they are done." She has also seen a surge in the demand for tall cakes. These structural pieces, though are a little intimidating, add stature to any event. She also believes that fondant and drip cakes will never go out of style. In the future, she hopes mechanized cakes make their way into India; where bakers also play civil engineers to mobilize their creations.

Harshitha's process of baking a cake for a customer does not just stop at baking. She is equally interested in their packaging and has made it an integral part of her branding. She sources her boxes from Bengaluru and sometimes even from Surat and Mumbai.

Social media is one of the key instruments of promotion for home bakers. It is through their Instagrams and Facebooks that they are garnering a majority of their clients. The reach social media has cannot be equaled by any other means, at least not for free. Very few home bakers turn to newspaper advertisements. "All my orders come in through Instagram", says Harshitha.

Another advantage of social media is sharing. Home bakers can constantly keep their clients - both prospective and regular ones updated by sharing their latest creations. Likes and comments also give bakers the validation and appreciation that they deserve.

"However, social media also has a downside", Prakruthi points out. "People end up copying your designs that you've put so much time and effort into and do not give you credits! But apart from that, even my grandmother is on Facebook and she shares all my work with her friends proudly!"

3:00 PM; Friday; Fairy's Touch, Gokulam. Effervescent hues of the city muted, the sky settling into a perpetual twilight. More wafts of cupcakes baking.

"It all started by accident", laugh Mr. Som and Mrs. Poornima, the 'couple trained in Australia'. "We fell in love with cupcakes in Melbourne". They go on to explain how cupcakes, a quintessentially American treat, became popular in Australia through farmer markets.

Melbourne. Jennifer Graham. Workshops.  Kirsten Tibbals.Bengaluru. Bake sales and carnivals. Cupcake kiosks in a mall. Fortnightly cupcake exhibitions which were an instant hit and now, a full-fledged little cupcake store in Mysuru, the saga of Fairy's Touch spans three cities and multiple business models experimented well over nine years. They are also an example of home bakers who have made it big.

"Consistency is our key and with quality comes consistency. Following our recipe without changing it, save, for seasonal tweaks is our biggest success. Your first cupcake should look like your last and all of them in between should be similar is a line from a workshop that has stuck with us", says Mr. Som.

For Fairy's Touch, Mysuru is a much bigger market. The reach and approachability here is wider than that of Bengaluru, where home bakers are confined to the area from which they function. Word of mouth and social media, to maintain which they even have an in-house social media manager, are also their biggest marketing tools.

As they complete four years this month, expansion is on their minds to cater to a growing population and the slowly expanding city. "The goal is to have two more outlets by our fifth anniversary!"

One of the biggest aspects that all home bakers struggle with is striking a home-work balance and especially so, as the lines separating home and work blur. "I work continuously on weekdays and keep weekends for my family", says Harshitha. "We are strict about our timings and don't work beyond it, come what may. We also make it a point to have family time", says Fairy's Touch. "One of the biggest advantages of being a home baker is that you don’t have to go out to work. However, the biggest disadvantage is that people think they have a right to contact you at any time of the day. We even receive messages at 1:00 AM", they explain their exasperation.

On the sunny side of things, every single home baker I spoke to told me that it was the smile on the customers' face that kept them going. "Every time a customer walks in, even if they are regulars, we see a different smile on their face", shares Fairy's Touch. "The fact that people write back saying they can never forget my cake makes me so happy! However exhaustive the process, it is all worth it in the end!", says Prakruthi.

From baking as a hobby to taking the big step and starting businesses, home bakers are metamorphosizing Mysuru's dessert culture and carving a niche for themselves on the city's entrepreneurial arc. From Toot C, which is considered to be the first home baking establishment, to Frosting, one of the most successful cafes today which was also started by a home baker, the Mysuru home baking industry has come a long way. With customization of everything at every step slowly becoming the norm, the scope for customized, home baked cakes, cupcakes and entremets is only increasing, the future of it all everything but bleak.

Home bakers with their ups and downs and the unison joy of sharing happiness, are a community of food crafters comprising of vivacious people, each one a pleasure to talk to. With their myriad experiences, each of them has a different story to tell, a journey of loving their work and living their passions, worth writing about.

4:30; Friday. Slow ring of joy in our hearts. More little wafts of cupcakes baking and this time you can see the aroma linger a little, leave the precincts of the four walls and tingle on the taste buds of a person who just double-tapped on a cake.