The perfect balance

Cake is the answer, no matter the question’ is one of the most common statements a dessert lover would use. Bringing in different colours, patterns, flavours and designs to the cake world, bakers in the city are going above and beyond the usual to deliver their best. And in this case, they are defying the laws of the world and baking gravity-defying cakes. Among these, one of the most popular cakes that is doing the rounds on social media has the structure of chocolate dripping from thin air or a bottle with its liquid being poured onto the cake. And enthusiastic bakers in the city are crafting their own versions of the same.

Ruchita Srivastava, a homebaker, celebrated her three-year-old daughter’s birthday based on a carnival theme. The enthusiastic baker wanted to make something unique as the centrepiece of the party — a cake. She says, “When my daughter was born, I would celebrate her birthday every month. That’s when I started experimenting with baking. I love making unconventional cakes and the gravity-defying cakes fit my style of baking very well. It took me a week to work on the detailing and two days to bake the cake. It was a tedious process but completely worth it.”

As expected, the guests and family were in awe of the final presentation. Everyone wondered how to eat the cake. “The construction of this was quite tough. I had to plan everything in advance, go to the carpenter, get the structure made and then bake the cake which would hold all the items that fit the carnival theme,” she adds.

One of the hardest parts of making these cakes is the planning. Though the final outcome is remarkable, the baker needs to know the measurements and proportions before they start working on it.

Aditi Garware of ‘Sweet Boutique’ enjoys working on gravity-defying and topsy- turvy cakes. The main difference between the two is that the topsy-turvy cakes need to be well-balanced whereas the gravity-defying ones have one element as the showpiece.

She says, “I work on a lot of Candyland-themed cakes. There are several layers to it that need to tell a story at each level. I need to work on the dimension, geometry, structure and other such calculations before I can even think of baking the cake.” One should also keep the weight in mind so that the base can hold the remaining layers of the cake.

“It takes a lot of time and patience to make these cakes. There was a time when I made a topsy-turvy cake and the lower layer sunk. This made the above layers collapse and ruined the whole thing. I had to rework it from scratch,” she shares.

However, the bakers assure that with proper measurements and care, it’s easy to fail gravity as well. Sandhya Parthasarathy from ‘Cake My Heart’ is another passionate baker who loves working on such cakes.

She says, “There’s a sense of mystery and magic involved with gravity-defying cakes. One of the main challenges is to hide the structure that we’ve decided to use for the final outcome.” She has created a two-feet tall Minnie Mouse and an eight-inch bird cage hanging from a tree. “The structures that I work with are actually simple compared to the others. It’s not hard to get everything in order if you have a good carpenter to help you out. I always plan what I want to do and how to play around with it before the baking begins. I want to try making an upside down chandelier in the future. Even though it looks like it might fall any second, it’s just an illusion — there will be support at every stage,” she explains.