A Rollercoaster Ride.

That's what I call the year we all just had.

We all started the year with fresh, bright hopes, plans to slay the dragons, and cross the seas. But sadly, before any of those plans could even begin to pan out, life as we knew it came to a screeching halt.

Suddenly we had husband-wife teams trying to make sense of household chores that were otherwise outsourced. We saw people get into a baking frenzy, saree frenzy, crazy Bingos, and whatnot. 

Anything to keep our minds off what was going on outside right?

For Dohful, it wasn't much different either. 

The year started on such a high note - we had just launched our Youtube channel. The aim was to show eggless baking in a calm and soothing, almost therapeutic manner. 

That's actually what baking is for us, a way to relax our minds and please our souls. And we wanted to bring that out in front of the world.

The response couldn't have been better. 

Our videos quickly caught up and even when we had just 10 or so videos on our channel, they started ranking on the first page of the Youtube search. 

In fact, someone posted this comment on our channel - Your channel is so underrated. I can't believe it, your recepies are amazing ❤️. Lots of love 🌸❤️   and I thought it was the best day of my life.

The blog section on our website, or as we call it, The Baker's Journal wasn't far behind too. Though we had been continuously writing on it ever since Dohful started, with the start of the Youtube channel, we wanted to make the blog a more comprehensive collection of what's what in eggless baking.

There was a lot we couldn't share on Youtube, like which Knife you should choose for your home kitchen or which kitchen essentials you should buy, or even some of the basics like what's the difference between frosting and icing. The existing answers to these questions were confusing and most often than not, away from the Indian context.

We wanted to bring content and context of eggless baking for India.

But amidst all this, we didn't wanna forget you guys. And so came the Nutella Lava Cookie. I can actually never forget the way this cookie was launched in Dohful.

Did you know, it was supposed to be a limited edition cookie back then? 

We were just dipping our toes in the water, trying to gauge if you guys liked it or not, and then planned to bring it back on the menu once we got feedback from you guys.

But all of that never happened.

What happened was the day this cookie was supposed to go live on our website, 22nd March, Junta Curfew was announced. And for a minute there it felt like a bad omen that we should have stayed away from.

In a way, I'm glad we didn't.

Junta Curfew extended to a 3-day curfew and then into a 3-week complete lockdown of the country. All those orders that we had taken on our website, never got dispatched. Our biggest strength at that time became you guys when none of you asked us to cancel your order.

For 45 days, we sat on 100+ Nutella Lava Cookie orders and it just didn't feel right to take it off the website then...so it just stayed.

And when finally we did manage to dispatch all those orders, the response we received was tremendous. One of our long term patrons called me and told me she will never order from us again if we removed the Nutella cookie from the menu.

It was settled right there and then.

But as you guys probably already know, the highlight of my year has been these Sunday Letters. Honestly speaking, writing has always been my flair but never in my life, I thought I'll be doing a weekly special letter (a newsletter, if you may).

The only thing that has kept us going week after week for the past 8 months is your responses to our letters. 

You guys respond with your personal stories, appreciations, feedback, and it motivates me to not just write these letters regularly, but also do great work in Dohful, generally. So thank you to the moon for all the support that you guys give us.

And this support has only increased ever since the lockdown ended. Came June, we actually started doing better and better in Dohful, all because you guys really stood up for us. 

So many of you have ordered 10 times or more in the last three months. Many of you have sent Dohful cookies to your friends and family on multiple occasions.

We have grown month after month ever since then and it's just because of you guys.

But of course, it hasn't been all good.

We've made some mistakes as we went along, a few things went wrong unexpectedly and some others just got left behind.

Youtube, for instance, was going great up until Dohful started picking up pace. And even though we tried to experiment and shoot more recipes after June, somehow we were never able to. But this project was really close to my heart and so we have made plans to have a separate area, just dedicated to making Youtube videos.

It's still under the works, but hopefully, we should be able to re-start our Youtube journey again!

We were also looking to launch a few more cookie flavors before the end of this year but I guess good things take time and you cant rush the process. So we are still experimenting and perfecting and the day we have something, I promise you guys would be the first to know!

As I said, a complete rollercoaster. But I loved every minute of it. I loved making those Youtube videos, loved baking cookies for you 10 hrs straight and loved loved loved writing these letters to you.

The last thing I wanna say before I sign off from this letter, this year and this decade is that along the way if you think we made a mistake or screwed up somewhere, do let us know...we'd like nothing more than to make it up to you the best we can. 

Thank you so much for being there for us, we hope to be in touch with you for years to come.

P.S.- There is a 15% off when you buy 2 box of cookies or more. Use coupon code TreatYourself.