Raunchy desserts

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With the party brigade clamouring for cakes that are risque, the baker's lot is an embarrassing one

When Preeti Macker's girlfriends organised a bridal shower in her honour last year, it wasn't the staid, rites-of-passage ceremony you might expect from a middle-class celebration.

A beaming male stripper was "rented" and everything was done to make the occasion a girlie equivalent of the most raucous bachelor's party. The piece de resistance?

A made-to-order cake designed in the shape of male genitalia, with white icing put to unconventional use. It had even the stripper blushing.

This party, incidentally, took place a good year before adman Suhel Seth's much-publicised 40th birthday bash, pictures of which showed him tentatively cutting a cake in the form of a woman's nude torso.

Gone are the days when the term "naughty cake designs" meant winking Disney characters. Now, at certain types of parties, you're more likely to find Donald and Daisy doing the unmentionable on a bed of icing.

Cakes with raunchy designs are becoming the order of the day "" not just in P3P-type gatherings but in small get-togethers, farewell parties... and even birthday bashes for 70-year-olds.

"It isn't unusual to find youngsters ordering 'naughty' cakes for their grandparents these days," says a south Delhi housewife who runs her own catering business from home.

Of course, these designs tend to be slightly mellower "" young ladies clad in panties giving "bum salutes" and the like.

But the more explicit designs range from the suggestive use of fruits like bananas to women's torsos with "Food" written across the chest and "Playground" adorning the nether region.

Most confectioners agree that the frequency of such orders is on the rise, and currently ranges between once a week and once a fortnight on an average.

Sumit Aggarwal, director, Rainbow's, which made the cake for Macker's party, says most people are quite open about such orders. "Just the other day, we had a couple walking in with a diagram of a dildo. They wanted a large cake in that design for a get-together for 13-14 couples."

According to Sanjay Kumar Roy, general manager, Bread & More (the chain earlier known as Hot Breads), "some customers show signs of awkwardness but it's a question of breaking the ice. Once we let them know we have taken such orders in the past, they relax."

Prudishness aside, such orders bring with them a unique set of problems for bakery managers, especially when customers simply describe what they want.

"We had a hellish time getting a cake made recently," laughs Roy, "because the young boys working in our confectionery had no idea about female anatomy. The result was an impromptu biology lesson."

More seriously, Roy admits that "it would be difficult to accept such orders if we had women working in our confectionery. It would be too awkward."

Are such cakes priced higher? Most bakeries say that would depend on the complexity of the design and the number of elements used.

"We wouldn't charge more just because it's a raunchy design," says Roy. Needless to say, the idea of lewd cakes makes many people squeamish, especially in schizophrenic Delhi where execution rarely matches intent when it comes to being "bold" and "with it". Leading the conservative brigade, surprisingly enough, is man-about-town Suhel Seth himself, who fiercely enunciates that he was "aghast" when he saw his birthday cake.

"They're thoroughly distasteful and invariably mock one gender," he says. "I've seen many cakes of this sort at parties recently but I would never order one myself."

This attitude is one reason confectionaries and bakeries are loath to discuss their orders. The cakes are made and delivered discreetly and there is no question of displaying them in their show windows outlets or in catalogues.

As Aggarwal says, "Bakeries are family-oriented places. The last thing people walking in with their kids want to see is boobs and bare bottoms, even chocolate ones, on display."