Divine Christmas treats by Dolce

Saturday, 13 December 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

With Christmas just around the corner, the preparation of Christmas food and decoration has begun, as is evident by the fragrance of cakes along with the illumination of trees and other embellishments around town. Not everyone has the time to prepare their own Christmas food though; hence the elevation of the need for bakers and caterers this season. Bakers are busy as ever with their Christmas recipes not only for the Christmas table but for lip-smacking gifts too – as Christmas sweets make delightful gifts. As the hunt for bakers begins, it is noteworthy that bakers may be in abundance but only a few stand out for their quality. The Weekend FT met up with Dolce Proprietor Menaka Wyomi Mayadunne recently. Located in Ratmalana, Dolce offers custom cakes, sweets, cakes, desserts, themed sweet tables for children’s parties and even meals. At present this home baker is busy preparing Christmas cakes, Yule logs, Christmas puddings, love cakes and all the sugary festive favourites as ’tis the season. As we drove down her lane, we had some difficulty finding her house. Our photographer got down in search of the place and as soon as he opened the door, the wonderful fragrance of freshly-baked cake enveloped us. I knew we were in the right place and told the driver to stop the car. I figured I’d just follow my nose to the right house but just then Menaka came out to greet us. I indulged in the fragrance while walking from the entrance through the garden till I was finally inside.

Sweet delight

What I saw inside was just as delightful. The house was adorned in Christmas decorations all over, right from the Christmas tree to every bit of the house, including table cloths on the dining and coffee tables. Statues of little Santas were on either side of the television and Christmas music was playing in the background. I simply loved what I saw. Before I got to tasting the cakes, we sat down for a chat and Menaka started off telling me how much she loves Christmas (as I had already guessed from the way she had adorned her house) and added that it’s the perfect ‘excuse’ to bake. “Dolce is an Italian word that means ‘sweet’. I’ve been doing this for several years now but Dolce officially started about three-and-a-half years ago. Before that I was just doing stuff for friends and family, little orders here and there, and then I was encouraged to do this in a more professional way. So I decided to put a name to it and little by little it has been growing from there,” she said. She does this full-time now and handles it all by herself. Menaka has a 10-year-old son and the kind of work she does enables her to attend to the child while at the same time, balancing a career. He is also apparently her ‘taster’. “One of the main driving forces behind starting my own business is that I could be available for my son,” she said. My son is my official taste taster… he okays everything I bake.” “There are so many people who are doing this kind of thing now, cakes, cupcakes, brownies, etc., and lots of home bakers are doing this as well – lots of other moms and women like me. The reason I would say my stuff is set apart is because I’m very particular about the quality of my ingredients; I source everything myself. “When you’ve been doing this for a while, you find out a lot of shortcuts that are taken in order to produce bulk and keep your cost down so it compromises on quality. But I would like to give a product that is still high in quality and also reasonable in price. It’s not like where you say: I have gourmet marshmellow and one marshmellow is Rs. 200. I want it to be affordable but I want it to be good stuff. So I’m very particular about sourcing everything myself and making sure I’m involved in every process of it.” When asked if she had attended a course or undergone any training to do what she’s doing, she said she had never attended any course and had actually learnt everything from her family. “Things like my Christmas cake, love cake, etc., are handed down over and over by my Burgher family and how we do it is a very traditional process.” She’s also a huge fan of Nigella Lawson: “She’s what I aspire to – non-fussy, home-made delicious food for family and friends. I do a lot of research on my recipes.”

The perfectionist

She works alone. Though that can get stressful, she said she prefers working alone so that she can personally attend to every single detail. When asked if it gets overwhelming, she said, “When there are large orders, it is a little overwhelming – more than a ‘little’ overwhelming actually,” she said, laughing. “In fact about a weak ago I had an order for a 25 kg cake, which is about 50 pounds and it was a two-tier cake; it involved a lot of work and I was working on it for about three days total. No one came near me during that time because I was stressed and…” she stops there and laughs. “That’s because I’m a perfectionist; I want it done in a particular way and the only way that I can make sure that it’s done that way is if I oversee it myself. So if it needs to be done, I will be up from 6 o’clock in the morning till 12 at night doing it because I want it to turn out to absolute perfection. It’s very stressful but it’s the kind of stress I enjoy. I really enjoy it. Once it’s done and I can see the project completed, somehow all the stress is worth it. But during the process, it’s: ‘Approach with care!’” she warns, laughing again.

Custom cakes without limit

“My favourite part of the work is doing custom cakes; I love the challenge and the creative license it affords me. When I say ‘custom’, it’s not just the outward appearance. I will make any flavour you like; any flavour cake and any flavour filling. If you want choclate-chip cake with fudge frosting and you want it to look a certain way, I will do my best to deliver that. “Usually when you order something you are stuck with a few items that you don’t want because it’s ‘this particular set’ and ‘this number of items’, etc. so you have to compromise but here I am not sticking to a very rigid set of rules.” There apparently isn’t a limit on what you can ask her to do. She will even look for a recipe and try it out if needed. “I will always strive to meet a client’s requests and will always work with the client and somehow tailor-make it so that they get exactly what they like.”

Affordable and accessible

“Food is something that we enjoy with family or friends but it is so over-priced. I really think that it’s important to make your products affordable and approachable.” There are lots of people who love to cook and bake but don’t have the time. She likes being able to lift the weight off their shoulders. “I love getting the feedback – when they tell me how much they enjoyed the meal; that it was great and they got the whole family together – I really love it.”

Little meals

“I even do meals where clients can come and collect it from me just to have a little dinner at home. They give me the containers and say they are having around five people for dinner and they just want to have some pasta and salads, etc., and I make it for them. They can pick it up and they enjoy a ready-made dinner at home,” she said. She has done three regatta dinners, barbeques on site and several other catering orders for around 200 people.

Time for tasting

Menaka displayed a selection of Christmas goodies for us, laid out on a table beautifully decorated with Christmas ornaments. Though Christmas goodies are nothing new and baked by others as well, there was a personal touch from Menaka put in each of these items.

Love cake

First up I tried the love cake simply because it looked crunchy, meaning it had nuts and was therefore calling out to me. The first bite didn’t disappoint me at all because it was as crunchy as I had anticipated. She said that she is generous with the nuts because she likes to see the reaction from people who eat it and say how crunchy and nutty it is. “I never cut down on the nuts. With some love cakes you can’t see the cashew nuts – they don’t put enough,” she said, to which I suggested that it’s probably because nuts are so expensive. She agreed but added, “I would rather get the reaction: ‘Oh my… it’s full of cashew nuts’ than ‘Not enough, no?’”

Christmas cake

I then tried the Christmas cake. Menaka said that a lot of people use dates in their Christmas cakes but they are not supposed to. She makes the cakes entirely with fruits and without dates. “Dates are a shortcut to ‘bulk up’ the cake, to give it more stuff and basically make it look black without actually putting any of the regular stuff. A traditional Christmas recipe has no dates at all! A lot of fruit is used and since fruit is expensive, they put a little bit of that and the large part of it is the dates so it will give that colour,” she explained. “The traditional one is actually soaked up to two weeks in brandy. There is a huge difference when it is done that way; I am used to the traditional thing and there is a lot of flavour in it. I always take a lot of care to make sure I stick to the correct method so that whoever tastes the cake can really get an idea of what the actual thing is supposed to be like.” She also makes the non-alcoholic version, which is the one I tasted. It doesn’t taste the same as the one that is soaked with brandy, she said, but I found it to be perfectly fine. She has already started getting orders for Christmas because the Christmas cake takes some time. “We have to leave it to pre-soak; if it’s without brandy, it’s not an issue. I have a batch ready that’s about to go in probably tonight and the thing is I can give it to you overnight – if someone is in a hurry for it, yes I can definitely do it but I would recommend giving it a couple of days because the flavour keeps building. “There are a lot of spices and stuff in it; there are nutmegs, cloves, cardamoms, rose water, etc., so once the float gets mixed up together and sits in that, the flavour builds up a lot more and is a lot tastier.” She also revealed that a properly-made Christmas cake had no flour! “Usually you think a cake has flour, butter and sugar, but this one has no flour. So because of that you can actually keep the Christmas cake, properly sealed, in the fridge, for upto a year! The fruit keeps fermenting and this is a cake which keeps tasting better the longer you keep it because the ingredients continue to ooze into each other and the flavour keeps building,” she said.

Marshmallows

The marshmallows were up next. She calls them ‘gourmet marshmallows’ and when asked why, she told me to eat one first so I can see for myself. The texture was different. It was a lot softer and creamier than regular marshmallows. “It’s like taking a mouthful of whipped cream; it’s like biting into a cloud,” she said – and it really was. “These are not the regular marshmallows that you find in stores; they taste a lot richer and have absolutely no preservatives,” she added.

Christmas cupcakes

Then I tried a Christmas cupcake. She presented a set of red velvet cupcakes, with various toppings, all bearing a Christmas theme. One had the cut-out of a Christmas tree on top and another had little sprinkles of red. I chose one but it looked so pretty I felt guilty biting into it. I bit into it anyway. With the colours of Christmas sprinkled on top, it was delightful. They come in a set of eight to 12 if you order a boxful and all come with the same filling but different toppings. She makes other flavours as well such as chocolate, butter cake, vanilla, chocolate chips and banana cupcakes but for Christmas she makes red velvet cupcakes. When asked what goes into it, she said, it’s the same as regular ones but with a Christmas theme on top. “It’s just the decoration that’s different,” she said.

Have a stress-free Christmas

As Dolce brings you all the sugary festive favourites, as well as meals to your dinner table, this sounds like an ideal opportunity to delight your guests without the hassle of cooking or baking, as Menaka is there to lift the load off your shoulders enabling you to have a merry and stress-free Christmas.