Delightfully designed cakes

By Fathima Riznaz Hafi

Third generation baker Aru de Silva watched her family bake cakes, pastries and a range of other food items for years and has now taken this work along a different path under her own brand – ‘The Sugar Shack’, with cakes, cupcakes and brownies as the items in her range, while specialising in high-end, design-oriented, decorative cakes.

Going strong for over five years, The Sugar Shack caters to individual orders as well as birthday parties, weddings and other events, also offering customised services.

“There was a group who wanted a cake for their friend who they say ‘looks like a mop’ so I made this cake with a mop on it,” she said, showing me a picture of that amusing cake with an edible mop on it. I’m assuming they were referring to the friend’s hairstyle. She is clearly open to varying preferences and incorporates her customers’ uniqueness into the cakes but also has her own set of designs.

Here’s a look at some of her baked goods…

Cupcakes

She served four types of cupcakes – the vanilla and chocolate cupcakes being the regular ones you find, while the strawberry and fudge cupcakes came with delectable fillings.

The Vanilla Cupcake is the basic vanilla cupcake with buttercream icing and coloured sprinkles on top. It’s a favourite and what you bring to the office as a treat. It was soft and not overly sweet. 

The Chocolate Cupcake is also one of the more basic ones she does. This simple, classic chocolate cupcake is rich and tender, with a swirl of chocolate frosting on top.

The Chocolate Fudge Cupcake was divine with the fudge filling oozing out as you bite through the centre and the top is fudge and nougat (cashew nuts and caramel) so you get a crunch with it too. 

The Strawberry Cupcake has a delightful serving of fresh strawberries cut into small pieces and placed in the centre. The frosting comes in two varieties – cream cheese icing or plain buttercream icing – this one is buttercream icing. She completes it with a strawberry on top. 

Chocolate Drip Cake

This is a chocolate fudge cake, made up of chocolate cake, chocolate icing and a layer of chocolate fudge but what’s different is the eclectic design where the fudge drips from the top, down the sides of the cake – it’s apparently the new trend to have the drip cake with this design on it. She finishes up with a beautiful topping of light fudge, nuts and a few strawberries. The taste was certainly good but I was more pulled by the alluring presentation.

Ribbon Cake with fondant and handcrafted peony

This is your classic birthday cake – the one you’ve grown up with and is Aru’s favourite. It’s a soft, fluffy, delicious ribbon cake with butter icing inside – covered with a charming light purple fondant. Most of her decorative cake bases are plain chocolate or ribbon cake which she covers with fondant and then does the decorative bit on top.

This cake was both tasty as well as pleasing to the eye, owing to the choice in colour for its fondant – the light purple exuded a sense of calmness, with handcrafted peony completing the picture. 

Strawberry Éclairs

A pleasant, fruity shift from the more common chocolate éclair, this had a generous row of fresh, juicy, strawberries cut into half and strewn along a bed of butter icing. She fills her éclairs with either butter icing or cream cheese icing – here she has used butter icing.

The combination worked well as the tartness of the strawberry cut through the sweetness of the icing and I got a weird mix in tastes, which I enjoyed. 

Coffee Nougat Cream Buns

These are small, cream buns with some filling inside and a bit of decoration on top. The decorating part, she says, is almost like how one decorates a cupcake. She has started doing variety packs with four to five flavours as filling – the one I was served had coffee-flavoured filling. The bun was light and soft, with a pleasing hit of coffee inside. It also looks pretty on the party table and offers a better visual effect than just a cream bun. 

Conclusion

Try the strawberry éclairs – they are a refreshing option to the regular cream filled ones. The ribbon cake with its pretty fondant is also recommended. The service is pick-up only except in the case of wedding cakes where she delivers it personally and sets it up at the location. 

To place an order she needs a day’s notice for plain cupcakes but anything with designs and decorations would need two-three days’ notice, preferably more, especially at the weekends when she’s quite full and after a certain point doesn’t take any more orders.

Pix by Upul Abayasekara