If you were to ask me what has been the most consistent thing so far in my otherwise chaotic life, funnily enough, it has to be the tiffin I carried to school every five days of the week for twelve years. My grandmother would arrange my school tiffin just the way the Soviet Union rationed food to its citizens. Over the years during my school life, even though I grew in size and so did my appetite, the contents of my tiffin box remained the same. But the contents, I tell you, were delicious for sure. It comprised four Milk Bikis biscuits (the delightfully designed white cream biscuits resembling a smiley face), a handful of sweet and sour chanachur, and my favorite of them all, a small square slice of Bapuji Cake.
If you’re not from Kolkata or rather West Bengal, it’d be hard to fathom the sheer love we have for this iconic cake and the collective nostalgia surrounding it but I’ll try my best to relay it. Punch-packed with tutti frutti and pieces of petha or ash gourd candy or chalkumra morobba, the Bapuji cake was a staple tiffin food for 8 out of 10 Bengali households. When I was in standard one, it was priced at a nominal three rupees and by the time I left school, it was five rupees. Neither its unique scent nor its delightful taste or its typical red printed cover package has changed for decades. Bapuji Cake is the labor of love of the New Howrah Bakery and it first came into circulation back in 1973 with the nominal price of sixty paisa.
From the 70s to the early 2000s, Bapuji cake was as ubiquitous as masks being sold during the pandemic. From dingy roadside tea stalls to regular grocery stores, you could find them anywhere. Even hawkers in local trains would sell them. However with time, everything changes, and the popularity of Bapuji cakes was no exception. Nowadays, even though Bapuji cake is still well in business, its demand is not as much as it used to be. I hardly see it in my neighborhood grocery stores. It probably has to do with the fact that its simplistic and inexpensive taste is not matching up to the cosmopolitan taste buds of the people.
However, if you want a taste of homemade Bengali nostalgia, you can awaken the baker in you and make your own Bapuji cake. Simply follow master cook and culinary influencer extraordinare Binita Das' recipe to the tee.
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