An hour at Helen’s cake

Sophia Chese Lifestyle Writer
After Sulu’s extraordinary cake during his 33rd birthday celebrations, people were left with a question, who made that cake? It certainly became a talking point, almost as much as Sharon Macheso’s wedding confectionery centrepiece. About two months later, The Herald Lifestyle met the person behind the cake, which rocked the social media soon after it was unveiled at the Dendera prince’s birthday celebrations at the Private Lounge; 31-year-old Helen Chirisa of Helen Cakes.

Helen opened up on how she started the cake business, her tricks and success in the industry. It all started when the country was facing economic crisis in 2008 when Helen who was studying for a degree in Business Management and IT failed to get the job that she had studied for.

As a stepping stone, Helen decided to try the cake business because that was the only thing that was easy for her and at the same time, it had the potential of putting some notes in her pocket.

“There were a number of people by then who were already in the industry so I thought of something that would make my cakes unique, thus I introduced personalised cakes.

“It was funny and after making the cakes, I would then post them on my Facebook page and this did wonders for me as the cakes attracted a number of friend requests on Facebook to such an extent that I soon reached the maximum number of friends — 5 000,” said the soft spoken Helen.

After this, Helen discovered that she could not stand the idea of working in an office where she would be tied to the tiresome routine of repeating one and the same thing over and over again. So from being a desperate move, cake-making turned out to be her true calling.

“I discovered that in cake industry, you will always have new things, new ideas and designs and I enjoyed it, also the look on people’s faces when they came to collect their cakes gave me the zeal and confidence in business,” she said.

With experience and the need to work around limited resources while still being at the top of the game, Helen learnt a number of tricks in the industry.

“The tools that are needed in this business are many and complex and sometimes very expensive. Some of them we don’t have here but it does not mean that we will hang the boots and stop making cakes.

“As for me I find alternatives for instance, I just look for something that can give me the same shape that the tool that is supposed to be used have, I could use bottle caps, spoons and a number of things in substitute of the actual tools that are supposed to be used but I still come up with the same shape,” she said.

This ability to adapt even stretches to ingredients.

“It’s true that sometimes I might not have all the required ingredients for my cakes but what I do is I Google to see what the ingredient is made of and I will do it myself. One thing that I make sure I do is to always give quality to our customers and there is no substitute for quality,” she said.

Commenting on how healthy her cakes are seeing as the world is moving towards promoting healthy eating choices to counter the explosion of lifestyle associated non-communicable diseases, Helen said she is currently working on diabetic cakes.

“Birthday comes once a year and thus the only day that you will grab as much cake as you want and I don’t think this will have effects but we also have cakes with less sugar for those who do not like sugar that much,” she said.

Helen to date boasts of having made birthday cakes for a number of prominent people in the country.

“I was privileged to make the cake for Roman Catholic 100th anniversary, I also made celebration cakes for a number of Parliamentarians after the July 31 2013 elections, Passion Java’s last year’s birthday cake, Walter Magaya’s latest birthday cake and recently Suluman’s Dendera birthday cake just to mention a few,” she said.

However, balancing being a wife, mother and a businesswoman is not always a bed of roses for Helen.

“It was difficult I tell you since sometimes I could work for at least 36 hours without rest, meaning to say I would not have time for my son and husband, I was always grumpy and moody because of being tired but these days I have learnt to separate the two, when I am at work I am at work and when I’m home, I’m home,’’ she said.

Helen who describes herself as a shy person said she has learnt to deal with the negative that comes her way by always looking ahead and working on improving herself.

“Destiny is not determined by people. I am thankful to God for his grace, wisdom and skills that I have exhibited so far. Some people have been saying negative things but I have learnt to always move on and I would like to advise other women who are in business that stepping on someone else is not what will make you go up,” she said.