“The filling – a vanilla-bean pastry
cream – is made in the old, traditional
French way with real Madagascan
vanilla pods, and is hand-piped into
each doughnut,” he explains.
Although Shakil is the baker and
oversees anything food related,
Nazeema is the real manager, he tells
me proudly. “She’s the one who takes
the orders, works with the suppliers
and runs the household,” he smiles.
Hailing from Durban, Shakil was
brought up in a household that loved
to cook and bake. He started
experimenting in the kitchen at a young
age and, before long, he was smitten.
Although he studied finance and
began working in the financial sector,
he longed to be in the kitchen.
Shakil finally left the world of
currency to study for a diploma in
professional cookery and pastry arts,
offered through the Christina Martin
Culinary Arts programme at the
prestigious International Hotel School
in Westville, Durban. He then went on
to work for a restaurant in Cape Town,
where he realised that all he really
wanted to do was bake. “There’s a
difference between a baker and a
pastry chef,” Shakil points out. “I didn’t
want to be a pastry chef; I wanted
to bake.”
And bake, he did; even at a top
restaurant in San Francisco, where he
fell more in love with francophone
influences. When I ask him to explain
what being a baker means to him, he
tells me that pastry chefs are usually
dessert experts and, while Tonka Bean
Bakery stocks desserts on weekends,
he loves the act of baking breads,
cakes, biscuits and pastries more.
After his stint in the US, Shakil
returned to Durban and set up a home
business baking breads, pastries and
cakes. It wasn’t long after that he heard
about the Riversands Incubation Hub
in Johannesburg, which led him to
pack up his family and baking tins,
and relocate provinces. “It was really
daunting,” Shakil remembers. “We
didn’t know anyone, had no networks
and no idea of how to market our
business.” But, after one online review,
their doughnuts became famous
overnight and people started pitching
up. Since then, the business hasABOVE: DIKELEDI SESHWENE
MANS THE TONKA BEAN BAKERY IN
LAUDIUM, CENTURION