the great bake-off

It all started in 2007 when I moved to live in koregaon park. We were the bus gang, noisy bunch of miscreants who wouldn't let anyone else sleep for the hour long journey to talwade every morning. Anthony Gonsalves taught me my first cake recipe of the sponge cake, with his secret tips to make it nicer. Then I adapted it to make an eggless chocolate cake, which dad could eat. That was the first time I researched recipes over the net and integrated the secret ingredients, tips and tricks. The folding, the precision, the patience, the icing and then the reward. My recipe was quite a success and I got several occasions to try it out and even shared it with my then boss. The next step was the birthday cake surprise for my ex. We didn't have an oven, so we decided to use a pressure cooker - unheard of in these parts of the world - but then we ran out of gas. So our neighbours volunteered their kitchen, for a share of the cake of course. We even got a local cake shop to help us with some icing. Oh the young and what their excitement can achieve..

Then I moved to Barcelona. There was no dearth of cakes there, our cafeteria even served chocolate croissants and apple muffins. But there were barely any Indian sweet shops and I started suffering from a craving for the raj bhandar or haldiram type of sweets, particularly gulab jamuns. Guess when you know you can't find it, it's then that you want to have it most. And on my student budget, I couldn't afford going to restaurants to fulfil my craving. So I decided to make them. Plus gulab jamuns had always been my mom's nemesis, so that was an additional challenge. I made it using the gits mix, but they were recognizable and edible. That spurred me on. I started experimenting with more sweets - made Besan ke laddo and gajar ka halwa.

a few months later german bakery was bombed. I had become a regular there during my stay in koregaon park - they would start packing a slice of apple pie when they saw me walk in. They would serve a cheese mushroom omelette with green tea if I sat down at the hippie wooden table in the dingy outdoor space surrounded by other hippies. So when it got bombed, I had a craving for apple pie. I went back to my researching methodology and figured out the recipe with the secret tips. The one thing I have learnt is that there is always a secret ingredient -it is worth the effort to find and include it. So I tried out the apple pie with raisins - just the way the german bakery people made it. And my American flatmate who was bred on his grandma's apple pie gave it a nod. That paved the way and I got the nickname of the dessert queen. After that I have tried out chocolate mousse, chocolate ice-cream (which was not a success - the secret was missing here).

This summer I moved to London. This Christmas I had my first gingerbread men and pumpkin pie. and my secret Santa gifted me a recipe book - the great British bake off. She figured I have a sweet tooth somehow. From sweet to savoury, from pies to cakes - it has it all in there. From my childhood curiosity of what exactly is a tart to realising that croissants are not magical after all, this book has opened a new world for me. Even the mystery of the one month fruit cake -which no one except Tony knew, both that it existed and how to make it. I can't wait -chocolate croissants like the ones in the IESE cafeteria, tiramisu which my Italian flatmate makes, rasgullas which can potentially scald your palms, gujiya for which I have been carrying the cooking mould for last 2 years and perhaps also rectify the disaster of the ice-cream experiment.

Somewhere in the future I see myself all fat and grey-haired, working in the kitchen, sunlight streaming in through the windows and a bunch of children running about, excited from the fragrance - wondering what the treat is this time around...