Learning the brownie from Mumbai’s ‘Brownie Queen’
How do I put into words my glorious relationship with this one product? Brownies are so intertwined with my life that they are a part of me, my identity, my childhood, my youth and my entire adult life. I am sometimes introduced as ‘Mumbai’s Brownie Queen’ on TV programmes or radio shows and I feel such privilege and gratitude to be associated with brownies in this way. My relationship with brownies spans every stage of my life… and my company is a brownie company in the eyes of our guests before it can even try to become anything else.
My brownie history is as much Mum's story as it is mine. It was nearly 25 years ago that Gulzar, a pregnant lady in our building, asked Mum to bake her some brownies. She had lived in America and was craving them again when she was pregnant. Mum had never eaten a brownie, so at first, she brushed aside the request. After a few gentle reminders, she found a walnut brownie recipe in one of her cookbooks, baked her first batch and delivered them upstairs. Gulzar loved the brownies and ordered them many times after that. Mum started offering brownies to her other customers through her catering business and they loved it too. This was the beginning.
Around this time, Mum's friend Nirmal Sethia dropped by for a visit. He tried one of Mum’s brownies, and said he enjoyed it. Sometime later, Nirmal uncle ordered a brownie at Cream Centre, a vegetarian restaurant at Chowpatty, and was appalled by what he was served. He complained to the manager and told him about Mum’s brownies, suggesting they contact her if they wanted to try the real thing. Mum got a call from Cream Centre the following day.
Cream Centre (then part of Blue Foods, a restaurant chain) is a vegetarian chain of restaurants, so Mum began experimenting with how to create a moist brownie without eggs. Soon, she was supplying brownies to Cream Centre, as well as New Yorker, New York New York, and Copper Chimney, which were all part of the Blue Foods Group. When Blue Foods began opening restaurants across India, they even transported Mum’s brownies by train to cities including Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. The brownies were so popular that at one point, a member of Mum’s staff was offered a large amount of money to part with her recipe. When Mum found out, she marched into the office of the person and said that she would stop supplying brownies immediately. An apology followed and assurances were given, and Mum continued to supply them with brownies for many years after that.
Mum delivered the brownies to the restaurants herself, and after I started driving, I shared that duty too. She had designed stainless steel racks that enabled us to deliver 20-odd trays at a time. The individual trays of brownies, held separately but on top of each other, were mounted onto a slotted rack and carried with a metal rod-like handle at the top. When Blue Foods started transporting Mum's brownies to other cities, we had to deliver them to Sion Bus Depot and Victoria Terminus station (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus). It was impossible to find parking at these locations, and we were constantly harassed by parking enforcement. One day, Mum had quite enough. She visited their office and set out her demands. She needed to
stop at these locations for less than 10 minutes every day, and wanted to avoid light
the daily stress and hassle. She offered a monthly arrangement and brownies, and she always paid on time. We were never troubled by them after that.
I’m often asked what is the secret to baking the best brownie ever. The key is in the baking, not the making. The world is full of brownie recipes and most are very good. The skill is in getting the timing and temperature right and baking it correctly. The difference between a moist, gooey brownie and a dry, crumbly one can be just a few minutes of baking time or a few degrees in temperature. Often, people think that making a brownie is much like a cake. But if you want a nice, gooey brownie, approach it as if you're baking a cookie. The centre of your brownie should be molten, and under-baked by a few minutes as it will continue to cook after it comes out of the oven.
Excerpted from Baking a Dream: The Theobroma Story with permission from the publisher, HarperCollins India