Mumbai-based cake artist makes elaborate festive treats

From sugar Santas to an edible nativity scene, a cake artist whips up unique festive creations

Everyone’s favourite festive activity this time of the year is to drive around town or walk along bylanes for an indulgent view of Christmas decorations. In Catholic households, apart from the décor, folks put their heads together every year to think up ingenious crib ideas. It’s not uncommon to see elves hauling tiny buckets of mud, lemongrass and sticks from the garden for an authentic crib structure. We have even seen inspiration being borrowed from school projects with sprouts grown on a bed of cotton for papier-mache cattle to graze on. There are no limits to creativity, yet we reckoned it was impossible to come across something new. Like an edible nativity scene.

Sequeira’s sugar crib from 2020

This is no ordinary gingerbread house. Every year, since 2014-15, Charkop-based cake artist Susanna Sequeira builds her household crib from sugar paste or fondant sans cake to avoid wastage. Last year, Sequeira created the entire crib, complete with bright-eyed characters like the three kings, baby Jesus, the angel and even the shepherd and his animals. Except for the dummy skeleton of the crib covered by fondant, everything else is edible. For this year’s sugary version, Sequeira is crafting the three main characters of Jesus, Mary and Joseph — the Holy Family — in an all-chocolate avatar. She says, “Chocolate and liquid glucose become modelling chocolate. It’s like edible clay, so I can play around with it. Sugar paste lasts longer depending on humidity and temperature conditions and you have more time to work with it, but with modelling chocolate, you have to work faster. This is the first time I am making a chocolate sculpture nativity scene. It should last a week or two.” She began work on it this week and will have it ready by Christmas Eve.

Susanna Sequeira

For orders, customers can head to her Instagram page. December is a hectic month for the artist with orders for wedding cakes and sugar Santas. Some of her largest works include three and five-tier cakes adorned with sugar flowers, sculptures and figurines, a dozen animals for kiddie-themed birthday cakes, and other sugar babies as she calls them. Sequeira quit her corporate job in 2013 to create edible flowers and figurines; over the years, her passion has led her to create sugar and chocolate magic. She has won medals for her work including one for crafting a bust of Mother Teresa. Sharing her 2023 sculpting goals, Sequeira tells us, “I want to focus more on India as a topic for my work because of our rich and colourful culture.”

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