Innovation key in the cake making business

18 Jun, 2017 - 02:06 0 Views
Innovation key in the cake making business

The Sunday News

Robin Muchetu, Senior Life Reporter
KATHY Mwanza (32), was a little-known name just over two years ago but today she has made her name in the cake business and is recognised as the Cake Fairy in Bulawayo.

For Ms Mwanza baking was just a pastime initially.
“I have always been baking for my family over the years and it was just something I did for fun. I never saw the bigger picture until last year when I decided to do it more seriously,” she said.

She said she decided to get professional training in making cakes.

“I went to train with Cakes by Hermish in Bulawayo. I received basic training on cake making, I got my foundation on how to bake at this place,” said Ms Mwanza.

After training locally Ms Mwanza decided to go a step further and she went to South Africa where she attended the South African School of Wedding Cakes and she did a course on basic cake decorating.

While in South Africa she met bakers from all over Africa and said it was an eye-opening time for her.

“I met a lot of people in the cake business during training. I got to see the different ways in which different countries were making their cakes and I learnt a lot that I now practice at home,” she said.

Asked on what stood out during that time in South Africa, she said Zimbabwe has to catch up in cake making.

“In Zimbabwe the average wedding cake is a fruit cake and to us that is standard or the rule but outside the country a perfect wedding is now charactarised by sponge cakes which are freshly baked. We need to embrace new things,” she said.
She said trends were changing, looking at cost and time factor as fruit cakes take months to prepare, so locals need to adopt changes too to their advantage.

One challenge that she noted with some bakers was that they lack originality and creativity. She said some bakers were using pre-mixed ingredients where one just adds milk or oil.

“When you make a cake it needs a personal touch, something that you stand proud of saying you made from scratch, premixes are good but it’s not the work of your hands. I bake the cake from scratch and I am happy with the end products as I can even make variations,” she said.

Some people, she said, were compromising quality for quantity.

“You find a cake maker using ordinary sugar instead of castor sugar which is recommended. This is because bakers want to use cheaper ingredients but the end product is usually not as perfect as it can be.”

The Cake Fairy bakes from her home where she turned her garage into a workstation. She said she works from home as the business is still growing.

The Cake Fairy is a married mother of two who is employed by a local insurance company in Bulawayo and holds a MSc Marketing degree from the National University of Science and Technology.

She hopes to open a business that she will market on her own with her qualifications. She said her day usually stops at about 11pm and starts very early in order to meet demand of cakes.

She said all those intending to run a successful cake business should be willing to invest in equipment as the machinery is costly.

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