I'M trying hard not to be rude. I really am. How do you focus on an interview when there's a sublime piece of dessert just staring at you right in the face? Okay, I'm exaggerating. Said dessert is on the table. It's the interviewee who's staring at me right in the face. No, wait. Nor Arieni Adriena Mohd Ritzal isn't staring. She's smiling. A little too gleefully, perhaps. After all, she senses my inner struggle — to eat or to eat, during an interview.
"You've got to try it!" she finally breaks the silence. Ah, the gods above are kind. To allow that slice of heaven to remain untouched in the next two minutes would be sheer torture. I can't help but think of the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova (whom the dessert is named after).
In 1905, she premiered a solo ballet, The Dying Swan, created just for her. Pavlova would go on to dance about 4,000 times before her death in 1931. Her performances were often lauded as masterful and almost an improvisation. "Really, try it now!" Arieni (as she's fondly known) urges me again, breaking into my meandering thoughts. My face lights up like a Christmas tree. No further encouragement is necessary.
It's with the improvisational spirit of Pavlova's performance that I approach my Pavlova (the meringue dessert, not the dancer) with a spoon and a smile. The Pavlova is, first and foremost, an ethereal pudding (in the British sense of the word).
The delectable slice of meringue is topped with tart berries that offer a perfect foil to its sweetness. Spooning a small piece into my mouth, I sigh. It dances between crispy and chewy, between sweetness and relief. Everything in life needs balance, and this classic Pavlova is a paragon of balance.
All things cake (Pavlova included) and more are the focal point of this little nook at Ardence Labs in Setia Alam, a unique lakefront shopping and dining complex housed in repurposed shipping containers.
If there's a visible sign of any cafe's popularity, this is it. The steady hum of chatter as I pushed open the gleaming glass door feels like a warm blast to my face despite the cool air circulating through the little pastel-washed nook inside.
Busy servers weaving through tables balancing trays of food; children scuttling around, while visibly relaxed parents and patrons dig into their lunches amidst laughter and conversation.
On one wall, the neon-lit sign "Bake the World A Better Place" hints at the stars of the cafe: the showcase of delectable, colourful, creamy, fancy gateaux in a dazzling variety of flavours, swathed in buttercream, gleaming chocolate and sugared dreaminess.
"This is exactly what I want," she sighs dreamily, waving her hand around. "Kids running around and families comfortable enough to sit down for a meal complete with desserts. So, it's not just about cakes. We have a food and drinks menu as well!"
The family-friendly cafe is just one of the 13 outlets run by this enterprising self-taught baker. "Thirteen?" I repeat incredulously and she grins before replying: "Six Gula Cakery outlets which are restaurants with food and cake of course, four ice-cream shops called Gula Creamery where I turn my cakes into ice-cream flavours, my Roti Jala outlet where I sell just roti jala with chicken, lamb and beef curries along with serawa durian which is a best seller, MN coffee featuring Vietnamese coffee and my latest Mexican outlet El Ocho where we serve up quesadillas, tacos and more!"
She reels them off in one breath, grinning. In response to my incredulous look, she confesses again: "I'm a foodie. I love food, not just cakes!"
ENTERPRISING SPIRIT
It's a far cry from how she started off, of course. Her first outlet was a bakery called Gula Cakery in Kota Kemuning. "So many people love to cook, they like food, and they think, boy, I'll have a job where I'll do what I love," she recalls, wincing, adding: "They don't realise how hard a job it is, both financially and physically."
Arieni learnt, but it was a painful and expensive education. Fresh from her stint in Paris
— the city known for decadent pastries and confectioneries where she honed and refined her skills at baking — she hadn't anticipated the challenges that entailed in running a bakery.
Business didn't flourish immediately. At one point, she was receiving little to no customers and struggled to make ends meet for a year. It broke her heart to see her freshly baked pastries, made with love daily, being thrown out by the dozens.
It was hugely stressful, she concedes, telling me that it was just her and another person running the bakery. "I think it was a huge learning curve for me," she recalls, admitting half-sheepishly: "I was so young and was just learning how to manage people. I mean, I
didn't even know how to manage myself completely!"
It was fun, but the stress was real. "There was a lot of yelling going on and so many problems. I was yelling, the staff was yelling. We were trying hard to keep the cakes on the counter and not strangle each other!" she confesses with a chuckle.
The young entrepreneur didn't take a salary for eight months, relying on her savings instead to tide her over. But she refused to throw in the towel. Waving her hands at the bustling cafe, she says with pride lacing through her voice: "Call me crazy, but I opened more outlets instead!"
She's an entrepreneur at heart. "I was eager to earn my own money," reveals Arieni, chuckling. The then-15-year-old Klang-born worked as a part-time waitress without the knowledge of her parents. After finishing school at 1pm, she'd take the KTM Komuter train to Subang Parade, where she'd work at a restaurant from noon to night. Her parents were none-the-wiser since she'd tell them that she was at a friend's place studying.
"I managed to get away with it for a while," she recalls, grinning cheekily. "Eventually they did find out and were aghast! But I was happy to earn some money so I could do my most favourite thing — shopping!"
The idea of being financially independent appealed to her, and she constantly worked a series of part-time jobs while juggling her studies. She eventually decided to make use of her cooking and baking skills — learnt from her grandmother — to drum up some business (and pocket change).
Recalls Arieni: "I grew up with my grandparents as my own parents were mostly working overseas. Some of my best memories were spent in the kitchen, learning how to cook from my grandma."
While the rudiments of cooking were passed on by her grandmother, Arieni further explored baking because "…I loved the idea of frosting the cake. It looked so pretty!"
Hardly the words of a frou-frou baker. She sounds refreshingly giddy like a teenager.
"A lot of my recipes are derived from my grandmother's techniques!" she shares, adding: "I still have her recipe books. My grandma would collect recipes and paste them in her book. She'd mark the recipes that she'd attempted and found to be effective!"
Like her grandmother, Arieni was surprisingly old-school in her approach towards baking. "I was so traditional. I had five wooden spoons and five bowls that I designated for baking. I didn't use anything else," she recalls.
Lifting her arms, she demonstrates how she'd beat her ingredients, two bowls at a time. "My hands would go like this!" she blithely demonstrates with her hands.
Impressed, I remark that she must have developed some muscles mixing her cake batter like that. She chuckles, saying: "My mother suggested I buy a mixer but I was stubborn. No mixer, I told her. My cakes are more delicious this way!"
Orders poured in after her friends and family sampled her cakes and brownies. She was excited. "Look mummy, I'm making money!" she told her mother gleefully. Her customers were impressed with her cakes, telling her: "You bake so well. Can you teach me how to bake?" Eventually, the self-taught baker started to organise baking classes as well.
Between juggling studies (she was pursuing her Bachelor of Early Childhood Education), baking and teaching, Arieni's schedule was tight. She had little sleep and not much time for anything else. But she was ecstatic. "At the age of 21, I was already earning around RM30,000 a month!" she shares, adding gleefully: "I had little time for friends but I absolutely loved what I did!"
Just before she graduated, 25-year-old Arieni opened her first cake shop, Gula Cakery, at Kota Kemuning.
PANDEMIC BLUES AND BEYOND
The initial hiccups that went with opening her first outlet didn't faze her. "I've always worked hard but along the way, I managed to put together a great team. Thankfully, I don't give up easily. From just one to two staff, I now manage 150 people!" she says, adding: "That, with the outlets and having two kids, I have a lot on my hands!"
Just when things were beginning to pick up, the unthinkable happened. The Covid-19 pandemic hit the nation and few workers have stood more directly in the path of the pandemic than those who worked in restaurants and cafes at the beginning of 2020.
With the cafes closed indefinitely, Arieni was determined to hang on to her staff come hell or highwater.
With the normal barriers to starting a business gone and the usual pressures of the marketplace scrambled, a wonderful, desperate creativity flourished in her kitchen.
She decided to take orders from home, cooking up large batches of her grandmother's famous roti jala with chicken curry, butter cakes and even curry mee.
"I started cooking furiously. The orders grew and at one point, I was baking up to 500 butter cakes a day!" she recalls. The proceeds she used to pay her staff during the lean months when the cafes were shuttered.
She cooked and baked until her kitchen pipes were clogged up and needed repairs.
"It was crazy! I'd wake up at 5am and I'd sleep late at night. I tried to sell so many things. It was hilarious!" she recalls with a chuckle, adding: "My husband protested
when our kitchen pipes needed repairs. Even the garbage collectors were pissed off at the amount of garbage coming from my house!"
Unfazed, Arieni refused to stop. Every cent went towards keeping her staff during the lockdowns. Whenever the cafes could open, they'd resume the cooking there to cater for the orders that were pouring in.
"Thankfully, business was good, and I didn't lose anyone!" she shares. A pause and she continues: "All my staff knows that I'm crazy. I'll never stop ensuring that the shops and everyone in my team survive tough seasons."
She hasn't looked back since. The outlets haven't just survived but they're now thriving. Says Arieni: "The roti jala and the curries were a hit during the pandemic. I decided to open an outlet specifically for this. The recipe I got from my grandmother!"
Her first roti jala outlet called Arieni's Roti Jala has since opened its doors at the Ardence lab here in Setia Alam. The 31-year-old will also be opening another Gula
Any chance she'd be slowing down soon? I tease. She grins before replying: "No way!
I'm having too much fun. It's a passion of mine to see this business grow and to know I'm able to give my family a great life in the process. What more can I ask for?"
I agree. The pink neon sign blinking at the corner says it succinctly. Bake the World A Better Place. For Arieni, baking has certainly done that for her and more. And if her cakes are anything like that sublime Pavlova I was served, I reckon the future for Gula Cakery is bound to be just as sweet.
