As the fad of personalised gifts spills over to cakes, it looks like the plain ol' Black Forest is dead. Available on the stand instead are 3D dessert stories starring quaint characters, designer bags, branded shoes, baby rattles and sometimes even an entire poker party, all made of sugar, dough and butter-cream icing
As the fad of personalised gifts spills over to cakes, it looks like the plain ol' Black Forest is dead. Available on the stand instead are 3D dessert stories starring quaint characters, designer bags, branded shoes, baby rattles and sometimes even an entire poker party, all made of sugar, dough and butter-cream icingu00a0
As you walk into dessert-maker of 22 years, Neeru Mehra's Peddar Road kitchen, you see a paintbrush, a tumbler of water, a few strewn tube colours, a canvas-like dish and hand-moulded characters that have been set aside to dry and harden. Since when did a famous cake maker's workspace , meant to be oozing with chocolate and nothing but chocolate, start to resemble an animation artist's studio, we wonder. 
Niketa Rampal and Aditi Kamat own Home Chef at Shivaji Park, a popular
bakery known for its personalised cakes. This cake was crafted for a client
whose husband is a software consultant and certified gadget freak.
Pic/Satyajit Desai
The 54 year-old laughs.
"Since a year," she says, briskly moving about assembling a cake shaped like a champagne bottle in a bucket. Mehra's 26 year-old daughter, Shradha, starts to ready another cake, this one for a baby shower; complete with a baby in a pram lying under a blanket. "Check if the blanket has dried," Mehra suggests.
Strange words to hear in a kitchen, but, as we found, there were stranger things in store.
u00a0
The intricate detailing behind each cake standing in the kitchen was mind-boggling -- Chanel purses, a Berkin bag, YSL and Louis Vuitton logo cupcakes, a calculator-shaped cake waiting to be cut on a Math professor's birthday, and their latest and currently most popular: Angry Birds cupcakes inspired by the iPhone game application.
Mehra and her daughter are part of a growing tribe of cakemakers whose brief has changed drastically in the past year. As disposable incomes of 25 to 35 year-olds in Mumbai steadily rises, and everything from food and clothes to furniture are getting customised, birthday cakes too, have turned into elaborate works of three dimensional art (and we don't mean three tier cakes with floss and ribbons).u00a0u00a0 
Mumbai designer Nishka Lulla, who frequently orders personalised cakes
from Le 15 Patisserie, got this cake made for her friend Siddharth Rawal's
23rd birthday.u00a0 It carried a sugarcraft cake topper or a 3D character that
looked just like him, down to his Afro hairdo.
Let's make it special
"Nobody wants to take home a plain pineapple or Black Forest cake anymore. Only because, it is possible to do so much more," says Mehra.
Just like children who never have a birthday party without devouring their fantastical cartoon characters and doll houses in bright pinks and blues, now, even adults seem to want their favourite books, cars, bags and gadgets -- punctuated to the very last detail -- for their birthdays, weddings and anniversaries.
The cake that 33 year-old Sewri-based Ashwin D'souza ordered for his grandmother's 50th birthday a few months ago, illustrates the detailing that customers now prefer.
"People usually do two-tier or three-tier cakes for such occasions, but I wanted a cake that would reflect the memories the family has shared with her," he says. D'souza ordered a cake that had a replica of his grandmother cooking in their kitchen. The cake kitchen was furnished right down to the cooking range, cabinets, a rolling pin and masala boxes.
D'souza ordered the cake from Home Chef, a popular at Shivaji Park bakery known for its personalised goodies, and owned by Niketa Rampal and Aditi Kamat.
Rebecca Vaz's The Baking Tray located in Santacruz (W) and Pooja Dhingra's Le 15 Patisserie at Lower Parel are the other new players in the 3D dessert market. These dessert makers take on almost any demand a customer hurls at them. The lot speaks of how the demand for 3D personalised cakes has shot up from two orders a month to 20.
Most of these cakes range anywhere between Rs 900 to Rs 2,500 a kilo, depending on the detailing required.
And the cost doesn't seem to have stopped customers from ordering exactly what they have in mind
Thirty five year-old Arpana Punjabi has been a regular customer with Neeru and Shradha Mehra, and has even ordered a dressing table cake, complete with lipsticks and a blusher set for an aunt who loves to dress up, Chanel bag cakes and Evil Eye cookies for friends.u00a0
"Now you can ask for anything, so why not do it? Cutting a cake at a grand occasion is often the highlight of a party, so, why not order one that is personalised to match your liking?" says the Cuffe Parade resident, who orders a batch of personalised cupcakes as often as once a week to gift pregnant friends, carry along to birthday parties or simply serve as fuss-free dessert at an at-home dinner party.
Punjabi, who is expecting in January, recently ordered cupcakes and cookies with 3D cake toppers like diaper pins, rattles, pacifiers, and booties for a trial baby shower that she threw last week. And while the 'real' baby shower is still a month away, Punjabi even ordered a giant cupcake with a stork holding a baby in its beak.
Both, the stork and the baby were crafted from white chocolate streaked pink and blue, and were a hit with select friends Punjabi invited for sampling the goodies.u00a0
"People are now going as far as narrating short stories they want translated in sugar," says Vaz.
The wizards of sugar
What's tough to stomach is that all 3D characters or cake toppers and embellishments are moulded with bare hands from sugar and its various derivates and dough, using nothing more than a photo for reference.
Sugarcraft, as the technique is called, is the same method that once gave us stiff pink and green flowers that stood on plain chocolate cakes years ago.
Except, the icing now is far more detailed, innovative and suited to each customer's uber-specific preference.u00a0
Big in the West
Frequent trips to culinary hubs like New York, London and Paris, where cakes have become nothing short of art pieces to marvel at, has helped Indians raise the bar in dessert personalisation.
In the US, a reality show called Cake Boss that tracked the making of unique cakes by the master of cake design in the United States, Buddy Valastro at his bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey, led to a rise in the demand for personalised cakes since 2009. Customers in India now get as fastidious as asking not just for a Facebook cake for their daughter's 13th birthday but even one with their daughter's Facebook profile and her favourite singer wishing her Happy Birthday on the wall.
"It was during one such order that I received that I asked Shradha to help me out," laughs Mehra, adding, "It's tough to keep up with this new-age stuff. Having a young mind around, helps."
Shradha is now defacto research head, advising her mother on what they need to work on when it comes
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