Food Talk: When Did The Bao Become The New Cronut?

By AEMAN NISHAT | INNLIVE

Everybody is serving the steamed buns filled with sweet-savoury odds and ends. Where did the trend start? And why?

Somewhere around 2011, Mumbai discovered the cupcake. What was really just cake and frosting in a not-even-so-new shape was suddenly everywhere – topped with delicate cream cheese on the shelves of fancy new patisseries, crowned with lurid buttercream on the display windows of old local bakeries. And of all cupcakes, red velvet was the most venerated – lauded for its mysterious crimson hue, extolled for its velvetiness. Tell an impassioned red velvet fan that it’s just boring old sponge cake with a dash of cocoa and a smidge of artificial food colouring – or worse, beet juice – and you’ll shatter their hopes and dreams.