CHENNAI: Stuti Surana’s day begins and ends in the kitchen amid flours and flavours. This 20-year-old final-year student of MOP Viashnav College for Women was a shy kid who didn’t realise her potential until her mom gave her the much-needed nudge. Two summers back, she urged Stuti to join a summer baking class, which eventually led her to start her own venture, Moicious by Stuti in 2020.
Celebrating the success of the past two years, the home baker introduced a new pastry to her menu just for chocolate lovers. She put out a poll on Instagram asking her customers to suggest a flavour, and most of them chose the five-layer chocolate pastry Thee Moi. “There was a lot of engagement for the flavour polling and I was surprised. It was not easy to keep in mind the audience’s opinion and make a dessert exclusively for chocolate lovers. I worked for almost six months to come up with this dessert and I was set on not giving up,” she says.
The name of her brand is a portmanteau of the words ‘me’ and ‘delicious’. “We get addicted to a dish only when we feel it’s delicious. That’s how I came up with the name,” she shares. Though the business was started during the pandemic, she got quick recognition from her neighbours in her apartment and soon word spread about her decadent delights. Initially, her menu had Chocolate Truffle, Classic Vanilla, and Pineapple. Soon she made a Nutella cake, then a Ferrero Rocher. Now there is Thee Moi.
Chocolaty number game
Explaining more about Thee Moi, she says. “Moi means me and mine. This is a single-person pastry shop. I came up with the name of my brand even before I began experimenting with the flavours. The pastry is made using seven different high quality chocolates. I believe, it is a rather succulent and the most delicious chocolate dessert that I have ever introduced.” The rich chocolate pastry include fudgy dark chocolate, topped with Belgium chocolate, covered with rice crispies, over a velvety chocolate cake which is further soaked with the chocolate Tres Leches milk, again coated with Belgium chocolate ganache and finally drizzled with Nutella.
“I tried the third layer with cookies, but then as there was a lot of fudge the cookies started melting and didn’t give a good taste. Then I experimented with rice crispies, which also didn’t turn out well. I kept on experimenting with a lot of flavours, and nothing was going well. Finally, I thought of trying the rice crispies one more time, with patience, and it came out really well,” she shares.
Stuti makes Thee Moi every day for people who crave chocolate and it has never gone waste. She is now planning on coming up with more entrants on Moicious’ menu like cheesecake and macaroons. Being in the final year of BBA, she has ample time on her hand as the subjects are limited. So she has been able to give a lot of her time to Moicious. But that was not the case earlier. “I am glad that my business has grown so far in the last two years. Juggling college and baking took time to adapt to. Initially, it used to take almost six hours to make a cake especially because they are eggless and I had to add that sponginess to them like the ones that has egg in them. But now it only takes me two-three hours per cake, and I feel I am improving,” she says.
She also intends to expand her business to Swiggy, Zomato, and Dot Pay in the future. “I do not wish to have a bakery as it is too much of an expense. I love to work at home with my fixed timings from 6am-7am and 3pm-5pm, so that I can provide fresh cakes to my customers. My family prefers freshly baked goods and that’s what I want to provide to my customers as well,” she signs off.
Thee Moi is priced at Rs 250 (150 g pastry) and Rs 1,800 (1 kg cake)
To order, visit Instagram: @moicious_