Coronavirus pandemic inspires bakers to get creative with innovative cake themes

With messages such as, ‘wash your hands and then touch me’, ‘don’t touch your face’ on cakes, bakers are looking at the positive side during quarantine and managing to keep their business afloat!

From cakes wearing a mask made of fondant to some shaped like disinfecting wipes, the world of bakers have upped their creative and innovation game, in these times of coronavirus pandemic. Many bakers have come up with cake themes inspired by the pandemic.

Finding the positive outlook even in difficult times is important feels Krutika Rajay Kandade of Kandy’s Cakes, a Bombay based baker who put up a decadent picture of a cake on her Instagram that shows a face mask made with fondant and has a message that states, “Wash your hands and then touch me.” Talking about how the idea of a quarantine cake clicked to her, she says, “I usually ask my customers what colour, flavour and design, taking all minute details, they want and then I sketch a rough one and share it with them. So inspired by the precautionary advertisements due to pandemic, I came up with this idea, and the customer was very happy to see one.”

To this, another Delhi-based baker, Gauri who is baking artful quarantine cakes only on requests, believes that this is the time to show support for local and small businesses and keep them afloat. “For entrepreneurs like us who are still lucky to deliver to our customers, this is a great way to spread the message of social distancing yet manage our finances.” She also adds, “I am trying to avoid putting up photos of quarantine-cakes as it may lead to customers ordering them on daily basis and currently I don’t have kitchen staff to help me.”

Read: Life in the times of lockdown: Add some fruity desserts to your lockdown culinary saga.

But it’s not just back home where bakers are inspired by such creative cake themes, a San Francisco based modern designer cake shop, Butter&, run by Amanda Nguyen had to re-think of strategies to keep the business going as clients had started to cancel the cake orders. She says, “I refused to lay any members of our team off or reduce hours. I had to re-think what creating value would be for our clients. We needed to come up with something new so that we could stay open, pay our staff, and serve our community. Since our clients were stuck at home, we decided to meet them there. Our usual cakes serve 8 or more people, so we had to do something smaller for 1-2 people. We also wanted to help educate people about how to slow the virus.”

She also confesses, “The first week of quarantine went from being one of our worst ever with business down 65% to, in a 24 hour period, shifting to become our best week ever.” Talking about maintaining hygiene , she says, “We disinfect our surfaces multiple times per day, we work 6 feet apart from each other, we wash our hands frequently, we hand off all our orders with a mask and gloves on and place the cake box on a tray so that there’s no contact between our staff and someone picking up their order, and so on.”

Also, as Riverdale star Vanessa Morgan rang in her 28th birthday during the quarantine period, she got a quarantine cake too in the shape of Lysol disinfecting wipes! In an Instagram post, she shared, “Thank you all so much for the Birthday Messages! haha never thought a Lysol cake would be my dream cake but here in 2020, yup it is! Been a weird Birthday for me, not getting to be with my family or my friends and in self quarantine. (sic)”

However, Delhi-based baker Aanchal Kanotra who runs Muffsy’s by Aanchal Kanotra has been trying to explain her clients that celebrations can be done post lockdown once the environment is safe and healthy. She says, “Apart from being under a lockdown another important aspect to consider is that one is not always aware about the baker’s recent history and since baking involves a lot of direct hand work no matter how hygienic you and your kitchen is, it poses a lot of risk.” Further adding, “Even if anyone wants to pick it up they basically have to come out and reach your place which is against all the advisories.”

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