Sweet treats and social connection at Nanna’s Bake Club
Nanna’s Bake Club connects people with a love of baking and the Christmas edition this Saturday is hosted by Cielo owner Chaveli Goya.
There’s been a resurgence of social connection. Not in the form of sliding into DMs, Snapchatting until early hours of the morning or simply following people on Instagram, but instead with physical, human connection.
With the rise of run clubs, and social events, people are finding ways to make friends that go beyond their phones.
Chaveli Goya, owner of tea room Cielo, noticed just this.
“I feel like even for myself as an example, if I didn’t leave this place [Cielo], I probably wouldn’t meet people,” Chaveli says.
“A lot of people have their nine-to-five jobs and they know people at work, but they just go home because they don’t feel the courage to go out and meet other people.
“People are probably starting to realise that that’s not a way of living either, and human interaction and being in a community is how humans should be, and that’s how it was before.
“I feel like people are just realising that they can’t just be behind this phone or behind their computer – it’s not a life really worth living. It’s about connecting and meeting other people.”
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A cake box filled with goodies at Nanna’s Bake Club. This picture: supplied.
The realisation led Chaveli to create Nanna’s Bake Club – a baking social community that shares a love of cake and social connection.
The club meets approximately once a month at various locations around South Australia. The only requirement is to purchase a $33 ticket – which covers the cost of a name tag, cake tag, notebook and cake box – and bring a baked good.
“I had seen that there was a lot of them in the US and in the UK – I saw some people doing bake clubs or like cookbook clubs… and I was like ‘oh, that’s so cool’. But I felt like no one would come [if I hosted one],” Chaveli says.
Chaveli eventually bit the bullet and decided to host her first bake club event last month at Verté Kitchen, but she was hesitant about whether she should connect it to her business, which is notoriously good at baking cakes.
“I feel like there’s a bit of a difference here in regards to the experience and I don’t want people to feel like they would have to compare their cakes to what we offer here,” she tells CityMag.
“I want people to be creative in their own way so I was like ‘look, I don’t care if someone rocks up with something completely out of the normal or they’ve never made a cake’.
“I just want someone to rock up completely for the love of cake.”
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Chaveli was “excited” by the people who bought tickets and admired people’s courage to show up.
“I’ve never connected on that level… even my friend, Pat, that’s never baked before was like ‘I really want to make my grandma’s recipe’… it was just so nice,” she says.
“And even one of my workers said ‘I’m going, I’m bringing my friends. We love baking’ and I guess, obviously, that’s why they’re at Cielo in the first place, but also they could show that through their way of making things.”
One of Chaveli’s Christmas-themed cakes
Chaveli says one 19 year old, who had never made a cake, “got her mum to drive her all the way from Seaford Meadows to Verte just to do this”.
“She’s coming to the next one and she’s like ‘this is such a big thing because I don’t get social with people’, and she’s 19.
“She even said to me ‘I’ve never felt like I could do something, and now to see other people do it, I feel confident’.”
The second meeting of Nanna’s Bake Club is this Saturday between 2pm until 4pm upstairs in the Adelaide Arcade and is Christmas-themed.
“I guess that could be anything that’s Christmas: whether you do a tradition by making gingerbread cookies, or whether you have a traditional recipe that you make of a family pass down of a Christmas cake,” Chaveli says.
“If you have something that you do for Christmas and it’s savoury, well bring it. It’s still something that you can share with other people that they would love to enjoy.”
Buy tickets through the website and connect with Nanna’s Bake Club on Instagram for more.