While discovering ancient Anglo Indian and Victorian recipes and designing some quirky cakes with interesting flavours, a few women in the city are taking home-run enterprises to new heights
What’s flavour to one can be a business idea to the other. Sample this. Suniti Dhindsa was visiting her sister in Vancouver, Canada, and two of them visited a friend who carefully treasured home-made pear and ginger preserve in her refrigerator. It was found out that it is a traditional recipe being passed on from one generation to the other. Dhindsa loved the flavour and the fact that it is an ancient recipe only found at few homes interested her more. She brought the recipe along and today pear and ginger preserve is one of the bestlsellers at Sue’s Homemade Preserve.
Suniti was known among friends to whip up the most delicious jams, preserves and pickles with seasonal produce largely sourced from her own orchard. After 35 years of service with an airline major, she retired two years ago and that was when she bought a piece of land to grow apples in Paudi, Garhwal. “With ample produce I could only think of making preserves since I was fond of my grandmother’s recipe of making them and her cooking style. So I started by making different preserves without the use of artificial flavours and colours. I gifted them to friends and family and got amazing response. Encouraged by that I started looking out for more traditional recipes which are part of family traditions and expanded the variety I used to cook. Word of mouth spread as I started to sell them out and today the business is good. I receive bulk orders as people now want to present them with wedding cards and on other family occasions,” shares Suniti, who on an average sells 10 bottles per day, priced at Rs 275 each. Apart from apple cinnamon preserve and hot and red chilli pickle, both ancient Anglo Indian recipes she got from a friend’s grandmother, her Chettinad garlic pickle, lemon and orange marmalades sell like hotcakes. “Since I work with seasonal produce, I am making mulberry preserve, which is a hit this season,” adds 59-year-old Suniti who has made best use of her passion and is pretty well-known today.
like Suniti, there are several others who are converting their passion for cooking and baking into serious business. The aim is not just to earn money while being at home and doing what they love, but to serve people the best. “I was trained at Culinary Institute of America in California and worked at the Oberoi Udai Vilas and one thing I learnt there was that whatever goes out of your kitchen was the best. I did not want to work in a bakery because I wanted to do something different and be known for my own work,” says 33-year-old Jaya Kochhar, who runs a patisserie at Safdarjung Enclave. She is known for her designer cakes.
“You have to think out-of-the-box. So we work with innovative ideas like we prepared a naughty cake with a person on a bed with a bikini clad woman. We also did a proposal cake for a military guy. He was shown bent on one knee in his uniform, a gun in his hand. little hearts were being released from the gun. This is so much fun to do,” says Jaya, who works with the team of six people, but that doesn’t keep her away from regular baking. “I love doing it and if along with that I also earn money, then there is nothing bad about it,” she quips. Unlike other business ventures, the good part about baking or anything of the sort is you don’t need heavy investment, but loads of passion and interest to serve people the best.
“The reason we are known for our cakes is that we not make them beautifully but the flavours are fresh and delicious,” says Jaya. The price for her classic cakes ranges between Rs 1,000 to 1,200 and decorative cakes per kg costs Rs 1,600 to 1,800. For Kanika Kakkar, a 31-year-old school teacher, her home-bakery was an attempt to reclaim long-standing yet unaccomplished dream. “I wanted to be a chef but couldn’t pursue it. I was influenced by my elder sister and mother who used to bake some excellent chocolates and cakes. So I started pursuing the same at the age of 16. Gradually, the hobby became a passion and a good source of revenue,” she tells us.