We are known for our sweet tooth. And more often than naught, it’s dessert that we pile up high on our plates after our meals, right from melt-in-the-mouth bolis to juicy gulab jamuns or creamy ice creams and fudgy brownies. But, just as the world of fashion sees new trends popping up each year, the culinary world too is constantly evolving, as customers seek to expand their tastebuds. While we have witnessed the union of pizzas and dosas, French fries and masala fries, and kathi rolls and frankies, chefs are now experimenting and transforming traditional desi sweetmeats into gourmet desserts by fusing them with Western recipes.
And if you think the spin-offs served are as limited and as unimaginative as gulab jamuns or gajar ka halwa with ice cream, think again; specialist chefs are now pushing the envelope with their sweet concoctions. So there’s the hot favourite gulab jamun cake, the sponge cake soaked in sugary rose petals and cardamom infused syrup and layered with sliced jamuns; the malpua cheesecake, which fuses star anise flavoured cottage cheese with creamy, luscious cheesecake or, that rasmalai filling hidden in rabri icing and more.
White chocolate Gulab Jamun Mille Feuille at Vivanta by Taj, Vazhuthecaud | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
“Since Indians are fond of everything sweet, and almost everyone has a dessert after a meal, pastry chefs are having a field day experimenting with textures and flavours, trying to one-up each other to serve unique desserts,” says Pastry Chef B. Sunil Kumar of Vivanta by Taj, Vazhuthecaud.
Chef Sunil enjoys playing with ingredients. So he has dipped berry-sized gulab jamuns, not in its conventional rose flavoured sugar syrup, but, in thick, rich chocolate and has stuffed profiteroles, not with the standard cream, or custard, but with rasmalai and mango rabri to name a few.
While his experimentations with desserts feature mostly during “international food fetes,” or “when a guest requests for a chef’s special,” the dessert counter at The Leela Raviz Kovalam, always features a handful of fusion sweets during their weekend buffets.
Sandeep Sukesan, pastry chef at The Leela, says borrowing Western influences is a great way to introduce our desi sweets to foreigners. He says: “While most diners are open to fusion cuisine, when it comes to desserts, most of them stick to things they know. By serving hybrid desserts such as dry fruit stuffed ravioli with saffron rabri and carrot halwa strudel, you are serving guests something familiar, yet different, to cater to their urge to try something new. These sweet treats are a gateway for people from around the world to savour our delectable range of mithais,” says the chef who has also infused local flavours to foreign desserts such as ilaneer payasam mousse with manganosa and aval vilayichathu in baklava.
Eggless Rasgulla Cake by Jasmine Sanumon | Photo Credit: Jasmine Sanumon
But the trend of creating fusion desserts is not limited to star hotels. Home bakers are giving traditional sweets massive makeovers too.
Jasmine Sanumon, a homebaker who has roots in the city and runs Jasmine’s Cake Boutique in Mumbai, says the trend for fusion desserts has been going strong for the last two to three years in Mumbai. “In fact, there are courses and workshops offered in Indo-Western dessert making, here.”
Mithais, she points out, play an important role in any festive occasion in North India. “But as tastebuds go cosmopolitan, the more exposed people are to other cultures, the more variety they seek.”
Hence, spin-offs of popular Indian sweets such as the rasgula cake and eggless ghulkand cakes, which she feels, began in Mumbai, “the culinary hub of India before it started trickling elsewhere.”
Like a scientist in a laboratory, Jasmine concocts recipes for her “desi sweets with a twist” in her head and tries them out through trial and error. Today her Jasmine’s Cake Boutique, which she operates from her Mumbai home, boasts of gulkhand truffles, rose and betal leaf chocolates, rasmalai cake with rabadi, Indian mithai cake with thandai frosting, gulab jamun mix cookies… besides the regular pastry and baked goodies.
Anjana John with her Gulab Jamun Cupcakes | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
In the city, the trend is however, rather recent and the varieties, limited, with just a handful of homebakers like Anjana John, Nasiya Aysha and Parvathy Ravikumar serving unusual combinations of fluffy cakes and traditional mithais.
Anjana, who specialises in gulab jamun cupcakes, points out how conventional Indian mithais from up North and East are not that popular amongst Malayalis as “we have our own traditional sweet dishes like boli, palada payasam and unniappam, which caters to our tastebuds.”
So, isn’t introducing such desserts a bit of a gamble?
Parvathy Ravikumar with her Mango Kulfi Cake | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Parvathy who serves decadent kulfi cakes admits she was hesitant to add the cake to her menu, but is all smiles as customers line up for the kulfi flavour of the season – mango. “There is a plethora of homebakers who serve the usual cakes and bakes out there and so one needs to keep innovating and introducing novelty fares to keep the customers coming. As of now, it’s mostly star hotels in the city that serve fusion desserts, so home bakers like myself, have an edge in the bake field.”
Nasiya points out how customers are gradually open to experimenting with flavours. “Also desserts these days, are all about visual appeal, flavour fusion and the oomph factor, all of which such contemporary desserts have.”
But unlike up North where mithais are easily available, the homebakers in the city have to make their own desi sweets from scratch. “It’s fun,” says Nasiya, who apart from the rasmalai cake and the recently introduced thandai cake, plans to add more hybrid goodies to her repertoire.
Nasiya Aysha | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
But fusion can lead to confusion, and the key in blending culinary worlds, lies, in teaming the right ingredients and in the balance of flavours, says Chef Sunil. “Else, you will have a bittersweet ending to your meal.”
So, borrowing a popular advertisement’s catchphrase, “Kuchh meetha ho jaye?”