Couple Starts Home-Based Bakery Selling Quirky Goji Berry Nutella Cookies To Teach Son With Autism Job Skills
“When Cal was diagnosed with autism, there was totally no one around us in such a situation and we felt alone,” explains stay-at-home mum Rachel Gan. “By starting Gan Delights, we want to advocate for autism and let other parents know that they’re not alone.”
Gan Delights is not your typical home-based bakery — to owners Rachel and Ming Gan, both 39, it’s a family business that they hope to one day pass down to their eight-year-old son, Cal, who has autism.
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From left to right: En, Rachel, Ming, Cal
The couple set up their bakery out of their four-room HDB flat in August 2023. It was born out of Rachel’s love of baking, a hobby she has been dabbling in since she was 15 but only explored more seriously four years ago during the Covid-19 Circuit Breaker.
Rachel tells 8days.sg that her baking chops were “initially self-taught from Googling lots of recipes and watching YouTube videos, but during the pandemic, [she] had a lot of time to kill and decided to take classes at a baking studio”. Currently, she is pursuing a master course in baking at ABC Cooking Studio.
The stay-at-home mum, who also has a part-time job as a corporate researcher, does all the baking at Gan Delights, while Ming, an Economics teacher in a junior college, helps with ensuring quality control, packing orders and deliveries.
Cal is in charge of writing name cards for his parents’ orders, while ‘PR-savvy’ En, who is more extroverted and talkative, interacts with customers during delivery drop-offs.
Cal’s journey with autism
It is especially crucial for Cal to help with the card-writing, as it improves his cognitive development. “Although [Cal] is verbal, he lacks the confidence to speak. He helps to write out customers’ names, so with every new name, we’ll teach him how to pronounce and write it,” Rachel explains. She takes turns with Ming to assist their son with his writing.
Cal’s ability to jot down names is a vast improvement from where he was just a couple of years ago.
He was formally diagnosed with autism in 2018, when he was two and a half years old. Back then, Rachel says: “He was totally non-verbal, and had very bad meltdowns and behavioural issues.”
As first-time parents, she admits that she and her husband were “totally clueless” about how to handle their kid. Rachel recalls: “Ming was the one who sprang into action when Cal was diagnosed. There was no time for denial or self-pity.” With her husband’s support, she left her job in corporate marketing and community outreach to take care of their sons (En was born only a year after Cal) at home.
Rachel noted that at five, Cal was “still largely non-verbal and couldn’t even sit down to do work, so his handwriting was atrocious”. He ended up attending a special needs school run by the Asian Welfare Women’s Association (AWWA) the following year.
But early last year, Cal suddenly started making rapid progress. “He began to sit down, take out books and keep writing. It gave us a lot of hope, so we thought maybe he might be able to get a mainstream education in a special needs setting,” Rachel says.
And sure enough, Cal managed to pass a test that got him enrolled in first-tier special needs school Pathlight, where he now studies a mainstream curriculum.
Feeling hopeful about Cal’s progress, Rachel says her hope is for Gan Delights “to be passed down to Cal eventually so that through this he will be able to live a life of dignity and self-reliance, and have something of his own that he can be proud of”. When he’s older, Rachel plans to teach him how to make her recipes.
Currently, she observes that Cal has shown some interest in baking. As he’s a food-loving eight-year-old, Rachel shares: “When I bake, he’ll stand at the side and watch.”
While she had set up her bakery biz in hopes that Cal will be able to take over in the future, Rachel is more than open to him pursuing other career paths. “To be honest, we don’t really know what the future holds for him, so if he has other interests, of course he’s free to explore them,” she says.
Gan Delights menu
Rachel’s bakes make use of more premium ingredients like Lescure French butter, French grey salt, Tomiz Japanese flour, kampong eggs, and Valrhona chocolate. Although these ingredients are pricier, Rachel thinks they’re worth the higher operating expenses. She points out: “Though our profit margin may be smaller, we are happy with what we’re doing as we love food a lot, and whatever we bake for ourselves is the same as what we offer to customers.” She makes her orders “in small batches a maximum of two days in advance, so that they will be fresh”.
She has three mainstay cookie items on the menu: Goji Berries Nutella Delights ($25.90/36pcs), Classic Nutella Delights ($23.90/36 pcs), and Valrhona Guanaja Almond Lace Cookies, which cost $13.90 per box (around 10 pieces — Rachel says the number of pieces varies per batch, as she tries to fill up each box to the brim).
Her signature and best-selling bake is the Goji Berries Nutella Delights, a creation inspired by Cal’s love for goji berries. The butter cookies come in a box of 36 pieces. The cookie dough is laced with bits of sweet goji berries, and topped with creamy Nutella piping and another two goji berries.
On special occasions, Rachel also sells limited-edition creations. When Cal received an achievement award in school last month, Rachel baked ‘Purplicious Hearts’, a sweet potato-infused butter cookie sprinkled with edible flowers. The Gans donate 10 percent of the proceeds from their cookie sales to charity organisations like the Autism Resource Centre.
Compared to when she was working full-time, Rachel admits that she definitely earns less now as taking care of her children is her priority. No regrets, though. She says: “Money aside, I would say that although I earn less now, being with my kids brings me happiness.”
Through Gan Delights, Rachel also hopes to inspire and help other parents with differently-abled children. “When Cal was diagnosed, there was totally no one around us in such a situation, and we felt alone, especially me, because I had to quit my job,” she explains. “By starting Gan Delights, we also want to advocate for autism and let other parents know that they’re not alone. They’re free to reach out to us or drop us a message on Instagram!”
For orders, go to www.gandelights.com. Tel: 8920-5099. More info via Facebook and Instagram.
Photos: Gan Delights
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