Living the sweet life

Cooking can really change one’s life and Kirti Bhoutika is a great example. Growing up, she always had her heart in baking, and after several failed attempts, she finally got a chocolate cake right, and that changed her life for good. She started a home baking business called Sugar Plum Cakery. Though life became hectic since, she allowed her passion to consume her and it eventually lead her to Masterchef India Season 5. She went on to win it, and the rest is history! ‘The Dessert Queen’, as Kriti was called on the show, was recently in Chennai for a dessert-making workshop at Taj Clubhouse. We caught up with her to talk about everything sweet and sugary.

“The workshop went on very well. I’m known for my desserts on the show, and we made gourmet eggless desserts, as people think that making good desserts without eggs is a task,” Kirti begins.

Talking about how Masterchef is the biggest turnaround of her life, Kirti shares, “Me before and after Masterchef are two different people. Be it cooking-wise or personally. You get to improve your talents, explore new cuisines, thus evolving as a chef. And all this training, meeting new people and working under pressure has made me a more confident person.” But the biggest takeaway for her is the fact that many come up to her saying she has inspired them not only to cook, but become a more confident version of themselves.

Until the break of the millennium, desserts in India were limited to kheers or sweets, and ice creams and cakes were the only western desserts that households knew of. Kirti says that desserts have become as important as any other part of food. “It’s safe to say that food in India is going through a stage of evolution. People are open to trying new desserts — if they walk into a patisserie, they look for the dessert that is most innovative. And not just in terms of consumption; more reason to believe why desserts are taken seriously are the number of jobs surrounding it. Being a pastry chef is becoming more mainstream than before.”

Although she is all up for modernisation of food, Kirti gets her guards up when it comes to subjects like molecular gastronomy. “I do practice it myself whenever needed. It is cool only when it does not alter the flavour or essence. You should not go overboard with it. You want food to remain food and serve it’s purpose. At the same time, there is no harm in modernising what we know.”

Although it is an unfair question to ask a pastry chef, Kirti is quick to answer what her favourite dessert it. “I’m a Bengali, it would be a crime to not say Rosgollas. I can have many of it at a time!”

Kirti hopes to keep imparting her knowledge to others in the future. “Teaching would always be a part of my career. ‘You teach, you grow’ is what I believe in. Opening up my own food studio and bakery back in Kolkata is also on the cards,” she concludes.