Shacking up with Schakasz

By Shiran Illanperuma

Sweet baked goods are by no means a rarity in Colombo. But to find a truly well-constructed cake, one with the perfect balance of flavours and textures, never too heavy or too sweet and made with the intuitive hands of a home baker? Now that’s rare.

Schakasz is a trendy little dessert bar down Stratford Avenue in Colombo 6. Opened just earlier this year, the outlet serves up wholesome, delectable baked goods, already racking up a fairly large clientele. 

Demand for Schakasz’s product is of course in tune with the ebb and flow of the holiday season. On any given day the bar could deafeningly empty, or a flurry of activity with eggs, flour, sugar and other ingredients passing between hands to form some of the restaurant’s signature cakes.

I walked into Schakasz on a gloomy and rainy midday, perfect weather to indulge in cake and hot chocolate. But before I can even get to these, I’m charmed by the general ambience and décor of the store. With light pastel colours all around the place is well lit but never overwhelmingly so. It exudes a kind of folksy, modern charm without straying too far into pretension as to exclude anyone.

Before I can even place my order, I’m offered what appears to be a plain glass of water. Looks can be deceiving. Taking a page out of cafe trends in the West, Schakasz offers its customers free water infused with fruits in a charming glass dispenser. The fresh crispness of fruit (in this case orange) infused in the water will prove to be a perfect palette cleanser later on, when I find myself floating from cake to cake in a sugar-induced fever dream.

I start off my ‘lunch’ with a Schakasz classic: the No Bake Cheesecake. It looks the most unassuming of the goods on offer, deceptively humble and plain. But a cheesecake as good as this needs no frills to make it sell. The minute my fork glides through the light airy body of the cake, I know I’m in for a treat. It’s silky and almost fluffy in its lightness, nowhere near the density and weight some associate with cheesecake. Like nibbling on a cloud.

With dessert-y delight sinking into my bones, I move on to the Lemonberry Sponge. The cake is composed of three wonderfully fluffy layers of sponge cake sandwiching whipped cream and a fruity jam. The flavours and textures are impeccably balanced and complementary, with the lemon leaving an exciting but subtle sharpness on your tongue as the buttery sweetness of the sponge fades away. My only complaint would be that the sponge was ever so slightly dry, but that was made up for by the light whipped cream and syrupy jam.

Floating on a sugary high, I ask to tackle the Chocolate Truffle Gateaux with Baileys Cream. Moving on from the lightness of my previous two dishes, here was a cake with an indulgent weight and density to it. Composed of an earthy chocolate cake layer and a sturdy chocolate brownie base broken up by a layer of cream infused with a generous amount of Baileys, this was sublime decadence. And to top it all off was the dense rich, dark chocolate ball coated in white chocolate flakes on top.

Finding myself utterly disarmed by the charm of Schakasz, I decide to take on one more slice of cake; suspiciously named DYMK, an acronym for ‘Does Your Mother Know?’ From the outside it almost looks like a black forest cake. But when the slice arrives and I see its many layers, I know better.

Chocolate cake, whipped cream, sponge, chocolate mousse and chocolate brownie layers all stacked on each other make a deadly indulgent combo that makes me understand the intent behind the cake’s name. I’m told that this was the result of an experimental effort to create something different to Schakasz’s usual simplicity and minimalism. And while I appreciate the effort, this did feel like a sensory overload not in keeping with the rest of the bar’s identity.

Schakasz, at its best, doesn’t stray over the top with its presentation. It’s simple, understated and rustic. Rightly so as the cakes have nothing to prove; the flavours and textures speak for themselves. Chanika and her team have managed to take the elegance and warmth of home baking up a notch with quality ingredients and a professional eye for restraint and balance.