CHENNAI: Karthika Shravanthi was always fond of baking. But she started seriously indulging her oven interests, she recalls, around the time that The Dark Knight Rises released in 2012. So, of course, the space where all her cake experiments were showcased was a Facebook album, cheekily named ‘Bakeman Begins’. “And the name just stuck after that,” the 24-year-old says with a smile.
Almost as a footnote to this story, Karthika throws in, “Oh and I was also a software developer at the time.” But a year later, she was off to Cordon Bleu in London, and there’s been no looking back since.
Interesting though, this baker with an imagination straddles two worlds — much batman. “During the day I have my white pastry chef’s hat on at the ITC Grand Chola,” she relates, “and in the evening, I’m back at home catering to orders for Bakeman Begins.” From eight-tier wedding cakes to a lifesize DSLR camera made of red velvet and vanilla buttercream icing, she’s done it all. While another signature is the French entremet — a multi-layered cake (you can count as many as six on some occasions) that is elaborately put together with choice fillings ranging from biscuit to jelly, at a one-kg weight it is still compact enough for a family of four. Her biggest seller though has been christened true to the movie that started it all — a decadent chocolate special made of Belgian Callebaut ganache called ‘The Dark Knight’.
But we have to wonder, how a baker who works a seven-day week, including long hours at a five-star pastry shop manages to...in a manner of speaking, have her cake and eat it too? “I don’t eat my cake anymore,” she responds with a laugh. “But my mother is a big help, and with a little planning you can make your filling, cream, figurines and so on the day before, so that makes meeting deadlines a little easier...” With 10 cakes a week most weeks, she tells us with a laugh, “It’s reached a point where my friends don’t say hi anymore, they just head straight to the fridge!”
To reach Bakeman Begins, call 9566140988.