One of our co-founders recently discovered a divine orange upside-down cake at a little bakery in Chembur. Called El Postre, meaning "The Dessert" in Spanish, the tiny parlour had many unexpected flavours on its menu. Her curiosity was piqued, and we decided to investigate further.
WHAT
El Postre is a little baking station making everything in a live kitchen where the customers can have a look at their products being prepared. “We are not just selling desserts, we are also selling experiences.
Customers can come and make/design their own cakes in our kitchen using our products, instead of making a mess at their place or going out and buying all the ingredients required,” say the founders.
“We will be conducting workshops as well, for cupcakes, healthy desserts etc. We try to play and experiment with a lot of different flavours while also keeping the trends in mind. We have been playing a lot with charcoal these days, to create charcoal macarons, tarts and cupcakes where we use food grade edible charcoal powder,” the founders add.
El Postre features different and unique flavours like Matcha strawberry, lemon lavender cakes, blueberry and coffee cream cheese muffins, Pb&j cupcakes, red velvet macarons, chocolate granola, coconut coffee cakes and cookie butters.
WHO
Sisters Vritti Vasnani and Shivani Vasnani are behind El Postre. Neither of them is from the food industry, nor have they studied about it. Vritti has done her PG in retail brand management and fashion marketing while Shivani is a graduate in Management Studies. She was working in a contextual advertising firm and quit her job to expand El Postre. Vritti Handles the kitchen and the recipes and Shivani handles the operations, marketing and branding.
HOW
El Postre started from a home kitchen in 2013, purely owing to a passion for baking. Vritti has been baking since the age of 13 and was forced to start selling by friends and family. She is a self-taught baker with a curiosity to experiment with different flavours. They initially gained recognition through word of mouth alone, with no online marketing or advertising. “Since the demand increased, we could afford to rent a work station space with a lot of support from family,” say the founders.
THE NAME
“Our baking station is Spanish-inspired as our mother has been brought up in Spain (Barcelona) and used to tell us her food stories from back home and the families’ love for desserts and how much she missed eating churros during the ferias. We’ve grown up eating turrón (Spanish almond candy),” say the founders.
Their products are also inspired from Spain, like churro cups, Catalan creme, cinnamon cookies, Spanish almonds cake. For now, Chembur is the only outlet but they have plans to expand.
THE PROCESS
Vritti comes up with the recipes. She also talks to her clients and understands what they require and also does a lot of custom flavours according to their preference.
The ingredients are locally purchased (mostly from Crawford market, they mainly use local and Indian brands). They use less of artificial flavouring and try to infuse the flavours as naturally as possible instead of putting essence. For instance, they use dried lavender flowers for the flavouring where the lavender is infused in milk or cream for 24 hours before using it.
Visit them: 301, Next to Balaji tyres, Behind K Stars Mall, RBI quarters road, Opposite CBI zonal office, near Diamond Garden, Chembur East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400071
Call them: 097699 71797