Dale's Eden Cake Shop

Working in Lokhandwala Market means there is always something going on outside our door. At number 20, we spend a lot of our time covered in flour and sugar. It's a small shop, and sometimes it feels even smaller when we have a big order of cakes lined up on the counter. We start baking long before the sun comes up because the ovens take a while to get to the right temperature. Most of the people who come in are just neighbors looking for a loaf of bread or something sweet for after dinner. We have a few display cases that we fill up every morning, and by evening, they are usually half-empty. It gets a bit hectic around the holidays or when everyone seems to have a birthday on the same weekend. We don't really have a fancy philosophy about baking; we just follow the recipes we've used forever. The floor can get a bit slippery from the spilled sugar, and the air always smells like vanilla. It's a lot of manual work, whisking and decorating by hand. We aren't trying to be the biggest bakery in Andheri West, just a reliable one where you can grab a cupcake. Sometimes we run out of things early, and we just have to tell people to come back tomorrow. It’s just how it goes here in the market. We lock up late and head home tired, but we do it all again the next day.