our story…

Baking was never ‘in my blood’. My parents are Indian, and my mother, like many Indian mothers, is a fantastic cook. I would watch her when I was younger at our family home in the UK, putting together wonderfully aromatic and flavorful dishes with relative ease, and never fully appreciated the skill that she possessed . . . but that really didn’t turn me on to baking, or cooking in general. No, I could never say that this was always my passion, or I was born with a silver whisk in my mouth, but that all changed the day I tasted Banoffee Pie for the first time.

My Aunt used to make this for many of the family celebrations that we had. It was, without a doubt, the most enjoyable dessert that I had ever tasted; rich, sweet, gooey caramel toffee on a digestive biscuit (think Graham Cracker) base with bananas and whipped cream on top, and it always seemed to me that it was such a simple dessert to make . . . that is, until, I actually attempted to make one myself. It was a very long time before I had another Banoffee Pie that would taste the same as she used to make; always the benchmark, never bettered.

In 2007 I moved to America, and one day, whilst sitting at home and going through some old photos I had, I came across a photo with her, and it was then that I decided to try and make one…to sort of “honor” her. It was . . . ok - nowhere near as good as my aunt’s, but then also not as bad as some others I’ve had.

A few years would pass before I made anything else other than Banoffee Pie. It wasn’t until the birth of my daughter, however, that I decided to be more adventurous, and baked her a cake for her first birthday. It took all night, and I must have gone through 3 or 4 different iterations, but at the end of it, apart from a birthday cake that looked and tasted great, I realized that I really liked baking! I think it’s the preciseness of it that I like; a teaspoon of this, half a teaspoon of that. Weirdly, it relaxed me, and from that point on, I started to see what else I could do.

Over the last few years, since I started baking for family and friends, many commented that maybe there was a business in this, so in 2018 my wife and I formed Ru Ru’s Cakery (so named after the nickname we gave our daughter) with the sole purpose of providing baked goods for our customers that are made from scratch.

I’m not a trained pastry chef. I haven’t been to culinary school, but what I do have is an absolute love for baking, and more importantly, baking for others. My passion for this craft may have started late, but as they always say “better late than never”!

-Cyrus