A dessert boutique sounds like a dessert-lover’s fantasy come true. With shelves lined with luscious and sinfully ‘chocolatey’ brookies, silky cheesecakes, muffins and exotic sounding confections, Sucree – The Dessert Mill, at Centre Square Mall, is the city’s first dessert boutique. The woman behind it is home-baker and now entrepreneur Tina Roy. The home baker who went commercial says attitudes are changing and there is space for a good dessert or dessert place, “If you see a good dessert like an apple pie or a cheesecake, they are going to be everyone's favourite irrespective of time and place.” Her ‘hand-crafted’ specialties sans enhancers and preservatives are home-baked, an extension of what she does as a home baker.
The city’s legion of home bakers introduces trends when it comes to cakes and confections. The commercial bakeries/cafes apart, many a celebratory cake come from their ovens. Many of them showcase their works on Facebook which look like cakes out of international food magazines.
A celebration is never complete without a cake, but today a cake needs accessories – cake pops, macaroons and the like to match. The expectations from confections have changed. Mere black forest gateaux will not do, not as cake not as dessert. The dessert-maker’s vocabulary has changed – it’s about compote, jaconde and dacquoise. Travel has afforded exposure and therefore presentation, technique and flavour matter. And of course, we have the Master Chefs to thank.
Textural contrasts - Entremet
Crunchy nuts, decadent gooeyness of chocolate, silky mousse, cheese cake, wiggly jelly – textural contrasts, often, each in a different flavour. Meet the latest in cakes/desserts – the entremet. A complex tiered-feat, what makes entremet perfection is how the flavours are matched. “While putting together an entremet, the set of flavours have to go together. There are a set of flavours that match – like strawberry and cream cheese, coconut and mango…in fact coconut works well with most fruits,” says Shazneen Afshar of Indulgence. A baker of confections, she says these are the in-things. Often replacing the cake at birthday parties and weddings; the number of components adds to effect. These can be cakes or petit fours or uni-portion desserts.
Dessert on the table
Themed cakes and cupcakes are passé. Say hello to the delectable dessert table – a sensory treat for the eyes and taste-buds. Here again it is all about the elements on the table. The dessert table bears a cake, cupcakes, cake pops, macaroons and cookies – all themed. Arranged with accessories, the dessert table is a feature at smaller gatherings such as birthdays, baptisms and such. “You don’t need say 200 of each, you can mix it up; it can be random and makes refills easy. It is interesting too, even for the guests,” says Anna Austin of Cake Canvas – Happiness in a box. The themes vary – colour-themed dessert tables are popular.
Cake deconstructed
There is a school of thought which says cakes never go out of fashion, made interesting by presentation. The cake love continues, what is any celebration without the mandatory cake cutting, “People love cutting cakes. Only the good old vanilla or butterscotch or black forest will not do. They want quirky, different cakes,” says Nandita Pai of Out Of The Oven (OOTO). Chocolate will not go out of fashion, the red velvet cake hype continues. Cakes in glasses and jars have been around for some time. The name is self-explanatory – cake layered in a glass or Mason jar. The deconstructed cake makes for an appetising sight too.
Flavoursome flavours
The keywords are different and unusual. Tina Roy says, “Now everyone likes to try something new, say a litchi cake or salt caramel.” Nandita avers, she recently made a batch of lemon flavoured cupcakes. Next on her agenda is green tea mousse which, she says, cleanses the palate.
The others
Naked cakes are slowly gaining ground, edging out fondant and icing laden cakes and desserts. With minimum frosting, relying on fruit and cream sans perfection bearing more of a rustic look is popular in these health-conscious times, says Shazneen. When a brownie meets a cookie a brookie is born, available at Sucree it marries the gooeyness of brownie with crunch of the cookie. Churros (a kind choux pastry) are to Spain what pazhampori is to Kochi, says Nandita. Popular among her clients, she makes them sweet and savoury, as also canapés. She tells of a friend who made a doughnut tower recently. While she is focussing her energies on perfecting the ‘croquembouche’ - a French dessert made of choux pastry balls piled into a cone and bound with caramel threads, she wants to introduce Kochi to it. These are had at weddings, baptisms and first communions.
