Sharing love with a wedge of cake
We’ve heard about chain mails and chain prayers but chain cakes is something new to us in Sri Lanka. Shanaz de Lanerolle, proprietor of Anna’s Kitchen has maybe started a new trend.
In her “Share the love” Valentine promotion one round cake gets cut into eight pieces and one person can nominate seven others to receive the rest of the wedges. Each of these seven people can nominate seven more people to receive a wedge and so on until the first 600 pieces sent with love, have gone around. Believe it or not, pieces of cake were even delivered to nominees in Jaffna.
Shanaz: Starting a new trend of chain cakes
Shanaz, the first link of the chain cake, chose popular singer Rohan de Lanerolle, who happens to be her brother-in-law as her nominee because he was the first customer of Anna’s Kitchen. “Each person gets a note which allows them to nominate seven people to receive a wedge by registering their phone number at wow.lk. Each nominee was given 48 hours to name seven more nominees. This went on to four layers. After the promotion of course, you can still send someone a cake but you will have to pay if you want to surprise a loved one with a wedge of the chain cake,” says Shanaz.
This mass scale cake sharing act was a success according to Shanaz who was rushed off her feet baking eight to ten cakes every day, close to a hundred wedges.
“I used 20 kilos each of cashew nuts, pumpkin preserve, and soft sugar and a staggering 500 eggs for this project. I mixed them in batches because love cake doesn’t have to be fermented for as long as Christmas cake. But I still had to close down all other orders for Anna’s Kitchen,” she adds with a smile.
She is pleased with the success of her creative idea. “What better way to share love than to send a piece of the cake to someone you care about? Delivery was done free too. One person will pay for the cake and send seven pieces to seven different people and be able to put a smile on their faces by reminding them that in this season of love you haven’t forgotten them either.”
Having never attended a cookery class in her life, Shanaz’s success story is worth relating. She was spurred to launch Anna’s Kitchen after people told her how much they enjoyed her food and that she should start her own business. She couldn’t have done it without the support her husband, Ishan de Lanerolle has given her, Shanaz adds.
“Food, I think is only second to music. It brings people together. Be it a wedding or a funeral, to make up with a lost one or to share your happiness, we always do it with food. The satisfaction you get when people eat the food you make them and appreciate it cannot be compared to anything. For me and most women, cooking isn’t just a chore. It’s an act of love, of sacrifice to nourish our loved ones and show our love,” she says.