In the year 2012, if someone had told Deepa Padmanathan that she would be a sought after home baker in Coimbatore, she would have scoffed at it. “But, a photograph I saw on Facebook changed my life,” she laughs. “It was of a beautiful butter-crème flower.” Deepa says she began baking only because she fell in love with the butter-crème flowers. “My sister was a baker and she helped me with the cake recipes. I then decorated them with my flowers and gifted them away. The response was great and this gave me the confidence to start an online page, Sweet Sprinkles in 2013.” Her page now has 5,400 followers on Facebook and 4,400 followers on Instagram. “I have not done any promotion for my products. It is all word of mouth,” says the 44-year-old, happily.

Deepa has now included sour-dough bread, puff pastries, macaroons and chocolates. “I bake every day and my work starts at 6:30 in the morning. It can go on till late evening depending on the orders.” Deepa needs a week of advance notice for her products. “This is for me to plan my schedule and come up with the design.” She sources her ingredients from Belgium, Mumbai and Coimbatore. “I only use the best ingredients. This makes my cakes a bit more expensive, but I stay away from stabilisers and preservatives. I also make my essence from scratch and keep food colours to the bare minimum,” she says.

Deepa has attended classes in Kochi, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Malaysia to master her craft. “I learnt from well-known chefs like Rumana Jasseel, Robert Haynes, Amaury Guichon, Johan Martin, Christopher Morel and Andrew Duboik. They taught me how to make French pastries, chocolates and sugar flowers. I also learnt valuable lessons on cleanliness and discipline in kitchen,” she says.

In 2016, she baked her biggest cake, she says.“It was a five-tier cake, weighed 21kgs and was two and a half feet tall. It had chocolate, vanilla, pistachio and caramel flavours. I decorated it with 60 sugar flowers. It took me one week.” Deepa also has regular customers from Tiruppur and Pollachi. She says the well travelled people here like her sour dough bread and her French entremet the dessert that has layers of cookies, cakes, mousse and crème. Deepa is now in love with being a homebaker. “My days are not complete without baking,” she says.

Visit https://www.instagram.com/sweetsprinkles or call 9003668833 to make orders