Having her own brownie brand is the icing on the cake for this 15-year-old
You’re never too young to pursue your passion. Meet Ananya Arapksha who at just 15, has her own brownie brand!
Coming from a family with an extensive background in the culinary industry played a huge role in Ananya’s love for cooking. So much so, it influenced her to look to a future in the culinary arts.
“I grew up watching my grandmother bake and was always helping her out in the kitchen when I was young. I would always be so impressed by her baking skills and I grew up admiring her hard work,” Ananya shares, adding that she first started with just helping her grandmother crack eggs for cakes.
A student of Asian International School, it was at one of their school Avurudu festivals in 2019 that Ananya stepped into the world of selling her baked goods under the name ‘Icing on Top’. She remembers how the night before her mother stayed up with her well past midnight baking brownies and how ecstatic they had been when they were all sold out.
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- Ananya: Happy hours spent with her grandmother in the kitchen
At the beginning of the pandemic, Ananya decided to take ‘Icing on Top’ more seriously and ventured into starting her online business. “One of the most challenging things is getting the word out to people as many have started their own small businesses,” she said when asked about the difficulties she faced being a young entrepreneur amidst a pandemic. Another challenge was obtaining ingredients such as cooking chocolate as stocks run low these days.
It was after a lot of trial and error with years of jumping between burnt and under-baked brownies, that Ananya says she ‘finally found the grey area’ between a gooey brownie and a more cake-like brownie.
Describing the perfect balance between a gooey chocolate mess with the slight texture of cakiness holding it together (best when they are warm and topped with a scoop of ice-cream she recommends), her standard brownies are exactly made this way. Then she gets creative, with her marshmallow brownies which are topped with a toasted marshmallow giving an extra bit of sweetness and creaminess on top.
Her standard brownies are definitely more popular as the marshmallow brownies might be too sweet for some, she concedes and she is also working on other flavour combinations to suit different tastes.
Ananya hopes to expand her menu as well by introducing cupcakes and cakes and undertaking custom cake orders in due time.
Contact her for inquiries at 0762690175 or check out the Instagram page @icin_on_top