Cupcakes, women’s new best friend!

Saturday, 13 July 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Rashika Fazali The days when diamonds were a girl’s best friend is long gone. Today, they have been replaced by cupcakes! Well, believe it or not, I know colleagues and friends who would cheer up at the sight of cupcakes because cupcakes have that effect. By some weird rule, cupcakes seem to have a gender – female. I don’t think you see a lot of men eating cupcakes, but they buy them for their ladies, mothers, daughters, etc. Polly from ‘Bake that Thing’ noticed this exact thing and decided to open a home bakery. As she believes that women need to treat themselves with a cupcake, she stated that it’s not just about having a cupcake at the end of the day. She said, “Maybe you had a bad day and you wanted a cupcake to feel good. Maybe you had a good day and you wanted to treat yourself.” She wants

ladies to buy themselves something sophisticated and interesting instead of something average to feel better, thus a cupcake! Polly happens to be a charming person who loves to bake, walking under the moon and beautiful dresses. Her cupcakes are as beautiful and lovely as she is. Apart from the usual vanilla, chocolate and strawberry cupcakes, she also makes some out of the ordinary cupcakes such as caramel cupcake with salted caramel butter frosting, mint cupcake with mint chocolate ganache topping, ginger lime cupcake, black tea cupcake with lemon butter cream and honey, apple and raisin with cinnamon butter cream, orange cupcake with orange zest butter cream, banana cupcake with chocolate ganache topping, and coconut and cake cupcake with vanilla butter cream frosting and roasted coconut, which I had the privilege of trying. Hands down, that was the best cupcake I’ve ever had. It’s such an unusual combination that blends very well. With her unusual combinations, people have been a bit reluctant to try them out and instead go for the same old flavours. But over the months especially after having a stall at the Good Market at the Diyawanna Oya in Battaramulla, people have become a bit daring. Her cupcakes are priced between Rs. 110 and Rs. 170. To promote her cupcakes more, she recently did a ‘cupcake shoot’ where she defines different women according to her cupcakes. Maybe the lady who buys herself a black tea cupcake is a lady who loves pearls and likes to dress up? Which cupcake are you? Polly also has a health collection. At the Good Market, you can be sure to get something good and organic. You can get yourself homemade granola cereal for 200g at Rs. 400. Polly’s granola cereal is quite unique and extremely healthy because she doesn’t add any butter, eggs, sugar or flour. She said: “The shop granola is most often kept for months and they put some chemicals in them.” Her granola cereal comes in either fruit and nut, or coconut and chocolate chunks. The same goes for her granola bars except that she adds a bit of honey and finishes her granola with a layer of chocolate. They are priced between Rs. 110 and Rs. 140. Her health collection also extends to healthy muffins which she makes with cottage cheese and semolina and don’t contain any butter or flour. They come in flavours strawberry, banana, pineapple and apple raisin and are priced between Rs. 90 and Rs. 110. Polly also makes biscotti which are twice baked biscuits and are meant to be hard. It’s a good treat with your tea as you can dip it in and have it. They happen to be butter free and are made with wholemeal flour and are priced at Rs. 75. Biscotti tastes a bit like the Sri Lankan wine biscuit except that it’s a lot tastier and is a healthy replacement. Her last and latest collection would be cake pops (balls on sticks) which are very much loved by kids. She mentioned that currently cake pops are the trending sweet abroad and so she decided to try them out here. Priced at Rs. 130, they come in few flavours such as double chocolate, vanilla with cashew, strawberry and cheese cake.Polly definitely deserves five stars for her cupcakes, creativity and colour. Try them out at the Good Market happening every Thursday between 12 noon to 8 p.m. Pix by Upul Abayasekara