Kunju's Jam Rolls Has Been Serving Up Slices Of Nostalgia Since 1931

The year was 1923, when a 16-year-old Kunju Ashan from Thrissur boarded a ship to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) along with his uncles. The youth had recently lost both his parents and was in need of employment. His sisters encouraged him to put faith in where the journey might lead him, and it led him straight to his destiny – being a baker who would leave behind a legacy.

In Ceylon, Kunju learnt baking under the expert hands of British bakers, who employed him. In 1930, Kunju returned to India. He got a job at the Bosotto Bakery in Madras (now Chennai), where he learnt more about the nuances of baking. In 1931, a 23-year-old Kunju returned to his home in Thrissur with a dream – to open a bakery of his own, and that’s exactly what he did.

But, in Kanjirapally, as advised by a friend. “Kanjirapally has a sizable Christian population and a sizable number of Britishers too, a friend advised him, says Dr KK Jayan, Kunju’s son, who opened a new outlet of Kunjus Jam Rolls in Panampilly Nagar, Kochi, in June. 

It has been a long-standing wish of Dr Jayan’s (since age 14) to open an outlet in Ernakulam. Dr Jayan, who holds a PhD in Communications, was told by his father to complete his education and then take the bakery further. But as he went down the path of academics, he ended up taking another route, that of a 9-5 job before turning his attention to the bakery.

“When Kunju Ashan started the bakery, the only two items that were being made and sold were plum cakes and pineapple jam rolls, which were made to perfection in the borma oven lined with coconut shells,” he says. A bite of the roll, the soft and moist sponge folded over deliciously sweet golden pineapple jam with chunks, would definitely delight your palate. I was, for once, transported back to my aunt’s kitchen in Kottayam, where she would make pineapple jam or preserve, as she would call it, which she lovingly spread on an evenly cut bun sourced from a local bakery, to be served with the 3 o'clock, kattan or black coffee.

“The taste is the same at all the bakeries (the ones at Kanjirapally, Kakkanad, and the latest one at Panampilly),” Jayan tells me confidently. “R&D or research and development is key to our success,” he says matter-of-factly. The jam rolls were and have been the bakery’s most well-known and best-selling item, apart from the plum cakes, which are made and sold during November and December. 

While, the bakery at Kanjirapally, named the SAC (St. Anthony's Church) bakery, served up biscuits, rusk and cookies, ever since Jayan took over in 2015 and opened an outlet in Kakkanad, Kochi, the focus has been researching on globally known cakes and making them available to Malayalees at a reasonable rate in Kochi– be it the Bolo de Coco or the Hummingbird cake. “It seemed quite pointless to serve similar pastries and cakes as the other bakeries. 

The idea was to create novelty, to give customers what is not available easily in Kerala. The trend began with my father, who introduced the jam roll, a novelty at the time. “The Bolo de Coco, for example,” he says, is a type of cake found only in countries where Portuguese is spoken. It was taught to me by a friend I made on one of my trips– a moist coconut cake, topped with grated coconut. The same goes for the Hummingbird cake that is originally from Jamaica – a cake made by combining banana, pineapple, spices, and topped with either frosting or dry fruits; and the Hazelnut chocolate cake, which is originally from the Piedmont region in Italy.”

Jayan and his wife, Dr Asha, a former general practitioner, enjoy baking. And the first thing they do each morning is bake. “Research, mostly through travel, is extremely important to me. So is the availability of ingredients. So, the strawberry jam rolls aren’t available unless fresh strawberries are in season, and the hazelnut cake is seasonal or is made depending on availability, too.

“Fresh, authentic and exotic cakes that are pocket-friendly are what we aim at delivering,” says Jayan, who follows the philosophy of ‘Panta Rhei’, a Greek saying, meaning everything flows. “Panta Rhei’ is something I believe in, because just like travel is a big leveller, so is sharing knowledge. So essentially everything flows and everything has a way of working out,” he says.

Jayan, who would work alongside his father at the SAC bakery as a teenager, says that he enjoyed observing and learning the process of how the bread was made, folded, left to rise and so on. “Even when I would travel and visit local bakeries, I would weasel into the kitchens, observe and try to learn the different techniques they would make breads, pasties and more,” he says. Over time, Jayan says, he would like to offer savoury items like cheese twists, crackers and breads, including the current favourite sourdough variety. In a state where baking and bakery culture are somewhat rampant, where an evening tea or coffee is rarely unaccompanied by a baked item or two, it is not easy to leave a mark. But Kunjus Jam Rolls has managed to do just that and has us wanting more.