Cakes and coffee in a vintage setting
View(s):On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Rukshi Nethicumara isn’t at Butter Boutique, watching her cakes fly out the door. Instead three times a week, Rukshi steps out from behind the counter of her new business to do some serious R&D – re-imagining what the menu should be in coming weeks. “If we do make something the entire team gets together and we eat it,” she tells the Sunday Times. “From the baker to the cleaner to the person who is serving it, they have all got to be passionate about what we do.” Rukshi leads by example: “I absolutely love my job. It opens up my creativity.”
Buttery, chocolatey goodness: A selection of the Butter Boutique cakes. Pic by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
This creator’s canvas is cake – some of the best cake you’ve tasted in a while. It is delicious and soft, a perfect base upon which to slather fresh cream or buttercream, to stuff with raspberries, to flavour with mint and coffee, to lace with caramel and sticky toffee. Her tres leches or thrice soaked cake is an airy, incredibly moist slice topped with a layer of whipped cream so light it dissolves in your mouth. None of these offerings are overly sweet, and yet they are as rich and satisfying as dessert can get. Pair with a cup of great coffee – especially air-freighted in from Australia – available at the store for a match made in culinary heaven.
Though her new shop just opened its doors (down 27th Lane in Kollupitiya), Rukshi knows the importance of being both consistent and inventive. Butter Boutique started out as a home-made-cupcake place. They also earned themselves some of their biggest fans when running a stall at the Good Market. In a space full of competitors, Rukshi decided to set herself apart by giving her cupcakes a filling. Nothing was too decadent, from chocolate cupcakes stuffed with chocolate mousse to red velvet paired with a gooey crème brûlée interior.
Rukshi credits her boyfriend Karl Perera with coming up with the idea for Butter Boutique. “It was entirely his idea,” says Rukshi explaining that at the time she was working a 9-5 job and didn’t enjoy it. Cooking though was always a passion and something she enjoyed doing with her father. But her success doesn’t come without effort. “My chocolate cake took me six years to perfect,” she says. “And with most cakes it’s trial and error. Sometimes we do it 15 and 20 times before we get it right.”
Over time the team have built up a repertoire of some 38 cakes and offer a selection of these that changes daily. Travel is one of the things that fuels Rukshi’s love of new flavours. One of her personal favourites on the menu is the Arabian cake which is an orange blossom water and rose infused cake, with raspberries, lychee and orange blossom whipped cream, pistachios and rose petals, inspired by a trip to Istanbul. In the US she discovered a love for Nutella paired with cake, and from Australia brought back a passion for raspberry cream. If customers aren’t tempted by cake in the summer heat, Rukshi is counting on the appeal of her popsicles, which come in flavours like narang and passion fruit.
Butter Boutique has been doing so well, that Rukshi says she is frequently asked why she doesn’t open more branches. “The moment you decide to expand, you lose the individual touch,” she says. “I taste and check every cake that leaves my kitchen from the icing to the cake itself for consistency,” she says. Quality ingredients – this isn’t Margarine Boutique, after all – are essential to Rukshi. She subscribes to the notion that‘good cake isn’t cheap and cheap cake isn’t good’ – her prices range from Rs.390 to Rs.500 a slice. “You cannot fool the Sri Lankan palate anymore,” she says. “Maybe you could 15 years ago, but not anymore.”
Right now, she has a team of 12 and runs her operations out of a section she converted into an industrial kitchen in her home.
The cakes may be her primary focus, but Rukshi put a lot of love and attention into decorating the space they occupy as well. She knew before she went in what she wanted – a vintage rose theme. The shop is filled with carefully chosen knick-knacks from all over the world: teacups from Istanbul, wall paper from London, birdcages from Singapore and other artefacts from Bangkok.She says some days when she looks at what they’ve accomplished, it still hasn’t sunk in. “I can’t believe I started with Rs. 5,000,” she says. “This is a dream.”
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