Sweet Layers is a home baker based in Piliyandala. They offer a range
of baked goods, but their pastries are what really sets them apart.
The Food
We
recently did a round-up of Colombo’s home bakers, and most of them are
pretty awesome. While Colombo has it’s abundance of home bakers, those
who live in the suburbs have less of a choice, so it’s great to see
places like Sweet Layers coming up. It’s run by a family so they operate
from their house in Bokundara, where you can pick up the orders. They
offer cakes, cupcakes, muffins, brownies, and pastries (both savory and sweet),
with a minimum quantity of 10.
While most of their stuff were
pretty good, their pastries were what really impressed us. They offer
both sweet danish pastries (Rs. 75) and savory puff pastries (Rs. 60).
The prices are also very reasonable since these were a lot better than
what you get at bakeries but at pretty much the same price. Just by
looking at them we knew they were gonna be good since they looked pretty perfect. Trust me it is not easy to get a proper shape, it either puffs
up too much or you end up with charred edges. The taste was just as good
as the look with the chicken pastry having a creamy filling with plenty
of chicken. The danish pastries had a light sugar glaze on top, one
with a thick chocolate filling and the other with marmalade.
We
tried both their vanilla (Rs. 80) and chocolate chip (Rs. 85) cupcakes
and they were also quite nice. The Vanilla cupcake came with a basic
butter cake and the latter came with chocolate cake with chocolate
chips. The real highlight of both of these cupcakes were the frosting.
I’m not easily impressed when it comes to frosting but I’d gladly eat a
tub of this (I have a problem, I know). The chocolate cupcake was
particularly interesting since it had a layer of chocolate ganache over
the butter frosting which added a nice contrast of textures.
The
blueberry muffins (Rs. 60) were spongy with the flavour of the
blueberry coming through well. This one was quite simple but we were
fine with that since the muffin had just right texture and an adequate
amount of blueberry. A good choice for those looking for something that
isn’t overly sweet.
The chocolate centered macarons (Rs. 75) were
the odd ones out here since they did have quite a bit of room for
improvement. Appearance is key in a macaron and even the slightest flaw
can be noticeable since it has to be perfectly circular, and the ones we
got had a few oval sides. Flavourwise they were fine, but the texture
was just a bit too dense and didn’t have the wafer-like biscuit we were looking for. Macarons are notorious for being difficult to master with only the likes of Caked really nailing it. Judging by the perfection of their pastries, we think Sweet Layers should be able to figure it out with time.
Conclusion
It’s great to see new home bakers like Sweet Layers coming up outside of Colombo. For a homemade pastries, we can’t think of a better place.
