The world of technology, particularly social media, may have sparked plenty of opportunities for young entrepreneurs to launch their business, but the competition is also immense.
In such an environment, where hundreds of businesses are offering similar services or products through Instagram or other channels, a creative idea and business strategy are a must to sustain one’s business.
There are many people trying their luck in the baking business these days and using Instagram to market their products.
Afshan Afzal, 27, is one of those young entrepreneurs associated with the baking business and is making their mark through creative ideas.
Afzal has combined art and food to create some of the prettiest cookies in Jeddah. “I was trying to find something where I would have my own freedom and creativity that I couldn’t find in a job. So I wanted my own business,” she told Arab News, embarking on the journey with the encouragement of her friends and family.
“They said that my baking was good and I should try my luck in this business. I wanted it to be sustainable. I did not want to pursue it as a hobby.”
To carve a niche for herself she used her love of art and her baking skills to launch her business. Afzal specializes in sugar cookies that look like intricate pictures. She is a self-taught artist who learned baking by trial and error.
“I started recently, so there are many challenges that I have not faced as yet. But, what I have had some difficulty with is time management.”
Afzal is the sole owner of the business and so is tasked with creating and executing the recipes, baking, design, product photography, and Instagram posts.
She said that Instagram was a challenge because of the huge variety of existing home businesses on the platform, making engagement and outreach more difficult.
Afzal said she took special care to make her products look beautiful, but also so they tasted just as good.
“I have seen a lot of beautiful things that don’t taste that great. So, I start from the best base product and tweak my recipes to make sure the final product is as close to perfection as it gets.”
She also made sure to keep her products affordable for whoever wished to place an order. “Every time a customer gives me a good review and if someone has a special day planned and I get to make them happy with my products is extremely rewarding.”
She offers soft cookies, customized sugar cookies, and milk cakes, and in the future would like to have an established line of products and something that stands out in a crowd of “very amazing bakers.”
Her products can be found on Instagram: @asterix.sugarfix
Startup of the Week: Baking creatively with a touch of art
https://arab.news/vnsvg
Startup of the Week: Baking creatively with a touch of art
Book Review: ‘Padma’s All American’ Cookbook
- For her, the true story of American food proves that immigration is not an outside influence but the foundation of the country’s culinary identity
Closing out 2025 is “Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond: A Cookbook,” a reminder that in these polarizing times within a seemingly un-united US, breaking bread really might be our only human connection left. Each page serves as a heaping — and healing — helping of hope.
“The book you have before you is a personal one, a record of my last seven years of eating, traveling and exploring. Much of this time was spent in cities and towns all over America, eating my way through our country as I filmed the shows ‘Top Chef’ and ‘Taste the Nation’,” the introduction states.
“Top Chef,” the Emmy, James Beard and Critics Choice Award-winning series, which began in 2006, is what really got Padma Lakshmi on the food map.
“Taste the Nation,” of course, is “a show for immigrants to tell their own stories, as they saw fit, and its success owes everything to the people who invited us into their communities, their homes, and their lives,” she writes.
Working with producer David Shadrack Smith, she began developing a television series that explored American immigration through cuisine, revealing how deeply immigrant food traditions shaped what people considered American today.
She was the consistent face and voice of reason — curious and encouraging to those she encountered.
Lakshmi notes that Americans now buy more salsa and sriracha than ketchup, and dishes like pad Thai, sushi, bubble tea, burritos and bagels are as American as apple pie — which, ironically, contains no ingredients indigenous to North America. Even the apples in the apple pie came from immigrants.
For her, the true story of American food proves that immigration is not an outside influence but the foundation of the country’s culinary identity.
“If I think about what’s really American … it’s the Appalachian ramp salt that I now sprinkle on top of my Indian plum chaat,” she writes.
In this book Lakshmi tells the tale of how her mother arrived in the US as an immigrant from India in 1972 to seek “a better life.”
Her mother, a nurse in New York, worked for two years before Lakshmi was brought to the US from India. At 4 years old, Lakshmi journeyed alone on the 19-hour flight.
America became home.
Now, with visibility as a model and with a noticeable scar on her arm (following a horrific car accident), she is using her platform for good once again.
Lakshmi is merging her immigrant advocacy with her long career in food media.
The photo of her on the cover, joined by a large American flag, is loud, proud and intentional.
The book contains pages dedicated to ingredients and their uses, actual recipes and, most deliciously, the stories of how those cooks came to be.
