FOR the past three weeks, four bakers-in-training from India, have been adding to their skills at The Pastryworks in Port Elizabeth.
Manikandan Armugam, Ragavan Ramakrishnan, Fenin Springson Samuel and Manibharathi Azagapan are employees of a new bakery situated in Chennai.
They landed in South Africa on August 30, since when they have received training before returning to India to open the new bakery.
According to Cherilyn Gottschalk, of The Pastryworks, they learned how to decorate cakes with various techniques, from buttercream to fondant, baking cakes and piping them, flooding biscuits, making cake pops and more.
“The owners of the bakery in Chennai, India, have chosen 16 fondant cakes and they will make these cakes from scratch,” she said.
Asked how these four bakers ended up in Port Elizabeth, she said, “Ralph Gottschalk, the owner of The South African Academy of Culinary Arts, does quite a bit of consulting around the world and the owners of the Atelier Velvet Bakery in Chennai contacted him to consult for them. He will be assisting them in opening their new bakery.
“We were given the cake decorating side of the consulting for the Atelier Velvet Bakery. And that is how we ended up with four gentlemen from India in our bakery.”
The head cake decorator of The Pastryworks, Mihlali Mpuntsha, will be taking her first trip to India, travelling to Chennai in November, to assist with the opening of the bakery.
The four bakers will fly back to India today, on September 25.
