PETALING JAYA: Camera-shy vegan baker Arati Vijayan, 29, pauses at the thought of having her photograph taken.
But standing in her kitchen, she’s clearly in her element as she expertly sprinkles golden crumbs onto the rather sinful looking vegan Chocolate Speculoos cupcakes she’s decorating. Then she tops it off with the bakery’s signature Lotus biscuit.
A giant mouthful of this spiced-shortcrust laden dessert will send sugary tingles all the way to your toes once you taste the Lotus Biscoff spread nestled inside the decadent chocolate. Pure heaven!
Just from a bite of Arati’s cupcakes, it’s no surprise vegan restaurants in Kuala Lumpur have been ordering her sweet treats to be added to their menu.
But the shy owner of the very successful Heart & Halo Bakery wasn’t always the queen of cupcakes, having confessed that during her first try, she proudly served rock hard cookies to her classmates at the age of 12.
Baking has had a special place in this Singaporean’s heart despite growing up in a family of chefs.
“Baking was always sort of magical to me. You could take a bunch of ingredients, put it all together and it would magically turn out delicious,” she says beaming.
However, Arati strayed off the sweet path for a few years when she decided to study for a law degree. But even then, she indulged in her sugar-coated passions with cake decorating classes at night.
Soon, the 18-year-old found herself baking on the side and the number of orders for her desserts was encouraging.
“But I failed my law exam,” she chuckles, adding that despite this disappointment, her mother supported her baking endeavours.
So, she wasted no time in opening up HotCakes, a vegetarian bakery and cafe.
“Since my time in Singapore, I had been experimenting with vegan desserts. I used to have many vegan customers come to my bakery every day just for those.”
Soon she was up to her eyeballs baking apple pies and cookies morning, noon and night.
However, she made the heart-wrenching decision to close HotCakes for good when she met her husband and agreed to settle down in Malaysia with him.
“I didn’t know anyone in Malaysia except for my husband and in-laws.
“Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when my two-year-old son’s two-tier banana and chocolate birthday cake was a hit with parents and children,” she says.
And just like that, orders for her baked goods came pouring in.
Armed with an oven and mixer, Arati began with just one order a week but she soon found herself wanting to start a new baking empire in Malaysia.
“HotCakes was very much my Singaporean identity and my family’s but I wanted to come up with something new that I could call mine.”
And so, Heart & Halo Bakery was born. In mid-2019, her brother-in-law Abhimanyu joined to help run the business.
“When it comes to vegan desserts, people are generally sceptical so we began with giveaways and we found that influencer marketing really helped.
“We would join events and then suddenly vegan restaurants such as Sala KL and The Hungry Tapir requested for our desserts,” explained Abhi.
According to Abhi, Heart & Halo Bakery’s best-seller was initially the vegan tiramisu but now it’s been dethroned by their vegan durian cupcakes and vegan pandan kaya cupcakes.
The vegan durian cupcake sounds like a definite Malaysian dream. Imagine this – a durian flavoured sponge filled with durian pulp, iced with a light and fluffy durian flavoured whipped cream and topped off with a durian glaze. Now, how more ‘durian’ can one get?
In fact, the Covid-19 pandemic boosted sales by 50% to the point that Arati and Abhi found themselves on their feet morning to evening, baking customer favourites like cinnamon rolls and cupcakes.
Now, the duo gets about 20 orders a day.
Abhi explains that vegan desserts are often misunderstood as either tasteless or unpleasant, so he would often sneak some to his unknowing friends who would be left stunned at how delicious they actually were.
“The idea here at Heart & Halo Bakery is to give our customers a delicious product that just happens to be vegan.
“Our goal is to give customers who attempt to transition to veganism a dessert option that’s just as good as the ones with eggs and milk in them,” Arati says.
A slice of good news for customers in Penang – Heart & Halo Bakery will be opening a second kitchen on Dec 25 along Jalan Anson, Georgetown.
You can place an order at Heart & Halo Bakery’s website here or check out their Facebook page for more information.