KOCHI: Baking has always been a thing of interest for the UK-based Neetha Syam, a scriptwriter but if you ask her how her interest turned into a passion, she says, “I personally like the taste of buttercream. So I thought of exploring this area and started baking cupcakes and experimenting on colour piping. After this, I started a Facebook page where I posted some pictures of my cakes where people started liking my works and told me to give baking classes.”
Neetha is not a trained baker, but her talent in making some of the best floral cupcakes has won her the Cake international, a global cake-baking competition. The entries are judged based on the taste and the presentation of the cupcakes. Neetha says, “After I won this award, I got calls from Kerala inviting me to conduct classes.” Her recipes and techniques make her unique in the industry. She says she started baking at the age of 21. It was for a charity bake sale at the company she worked at and so everyone was supposed to bake something. “I didn’t know what to bake but then I made something and that turned out to be good,” she says. “My cake didn’t sell at the sale but I got inspired by seeing the beautiful cakes with floral designs. It is then that I thought of learning and doing more buttercream piping.”
‘Buttercream Petals’ is an award-winning cake art school which Neetha runs in London. This school hosts a variety of buttercream flower cream piping classes. This self-taught artist will be conducting her first set of classes in Kerala. On December 16, the classes will be held in Thiruvananthapuram and December 23 it will be in Kochi. It is a full-day class (9 am to 6 pm) where they will start off by making the signature buttercream.
Then participants will move on to colour toning and shading techniques to give more realistic looking blooms and to make a variety of delicate petal piping designs. Neetha says, “All the materials will be provided and 12 different varieties of realistic flowers will be taught in the class.”
Besides baking, Neetha is a freelance writer and has written many blogs. Her writings have been featured in international magazines such as Cake Decorating Heaven, Food Heaven, Cake Masters and the Coventry Telegraph. For details: Contact Neetha: 7902806486