Toy town cakes

Nearly all the time, Mian and I eat as close to natural as possible. Whole, unrefined, unprocessed, local. Often, the only convenience food in our kitchen is the dried pasta that's made in a factory from refined flour and shipped in from I-don’t-want-to-know-where.

And sometimes I swing in the opposite direction and decide I don’t want any more multi-layer flavours, back-to-the-earth goodness, or carbohydrates more complex than integral calculus. Give me simple, I say. Sugar that zings straight to my synapses, transfats that make a bee-line for my arteries and chemical additives that flirt with my immune system.

It is then that I turn to Sugar Box. As the photo illustrates, there is nothing natural about the things they sell there. And in a way, I respect them for it..they are extremely honest in that they do not pretend to be anything they are not. The pastry in the photo might be called Strawberry, but nothing in the colour, filling, or flavour hints at a nodding acquaintance with anything that might be grown on this earth. And it does not matter. The 'cream' is tasteless but plenty, the sugar cannot be ignored, the mouthfeel is eminently satisfactory in its fluffiness. Sometimes that is all we need. And at 35Rs for a pastry, one has cash left over to embark on the detox diet of one's choice.

Not gourmet, not like mum makes, but an acceptable junk food fix. I know of two outlets, near the clock tower and in Indira Nagar, there might be more. What about mum, you ask? Well, its clean and respectable. Whether she loves it or hates it depends on whether she spent her youth celebrating the arrival of super-snazzy instant coffee powder or lovingly tending to her pot garden (pun utterly intended)..you decide.