When we published Annikki’s book "Edible Art" about her history of cake designing, the cakes were designed by her, most of the photos were taken by her, the text was written by me, but the maximum hard work of making these photos ready for publication was done by our dear friend SRK, Sriradhakrishnan Polsetti, who was working in Oulu on deputation from Nokia in Bengaluru.
Annikki’s coffee table book covers her 40 years of making all sorts of cakes from cakes for children, gingerbread houses, birthday cakes for me and herself, wedding cakes for family members, unusual mosaic cakes, cakes with ponds and fishes in them, mountains and many art cakes.
All her cakes were original and showed her talent as an artist.
Before getting married, she worked in a small Italian cake shop in Shrewsbury near Birmingham in England. Today Sidoli is a huge enterprise.
The first designer cake, a train cake, she made for us a family was for a joint birthday party in 1970 for our two children, Susanna and Jaakko, in our small house in Defence Officer’s Colony in St. Thomas’s Mount on the outskirts of Madras.
Her first gingerbread house was created in 1974 at our Velacheri Road house in Madras. She worked on it for seven hours. We stayed out of her way. When she was ready, she ran upstairs to call us down to see her creation. When we reached the living room all we could see was our golden retriever, Ruby, licking her lips as she had devoured the entire house.
Then I understood the meaning of Finnish ‘sisu’ as Annikki rolled up her sleeves and made another more beautiful gingerbread house and had powder sugar floating down to cover the house and make it exactly as snow covered!
We moved to Bangalore in 1976 and she won the prize in the cake competition where she displayed her first vegetarian cake made using yoghurt.
Gingerbread house making is an art. Every piece has to be made on cardboard, and the gingerbread baked using these cutout shapes. They then have to be painstakingly stuck together and then decorated.
Annikki always was way above the competition, first to introduce interior lighting and then even fitting doors and windows which could open and shut.
When she was looking after her mother, she first designed the garden so that her mother could sit at the dining table and enjoy her garden. Then she designed a gingerbread construction replicating the garden.
From then it was one new dimension after another and she was winning every gingerbread house competition in Oulu till they finally stopped the competition.
She diversified from traditional gingerbread houses to make Finnish constructions as Lappish kotas and the straw store houses.
Annikki never lost her sense of humour. When she reached the tender age of 60, she created a gingerbread house which she called "ruins". The lighting was entirely the streaming of natural sunlight.
When our grandson, Samu, returned from India before his first birthday, he had learnt one Malayalam word for crow - Kakay. For his first birthday Annikki made him a cake of a crow sitting on her nest with a lot of eggs, all on a cake pine stump base. Samu looked at the cake pointed and said “Kakay”!
When four young ladies from Aricent, India, asked Annikki to make them a cake, she deswignede one of a typical farm scene!
Annikki’s adventure in cake designing is truly one which was exciting as she tailored each cake to suit the individual she was making it for, especially me, our children, other family members and close friends. It was never a business - just art for the sake of art!
The Finnish vocational school from Espoo did an entire video of Annikki and her cake designing to motivate the elderly in Finland to show them life does not end at 70! (In Finnish)
The book Edible Art” represents all the talents of an unique personality, an artist, a cake designer, a wife, a mother and grandmother, a sister, a great friend of many, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law!
Above all the unrivalled talent of a Findian!
