A chandelier glows above the stage, its crystal droplets catching the light and sending it pouring over white feathers and fresh flowers that emerge from its centre. As the bride and groom make an entrance, it lowers slowly over the dance floor and the room gasps as one. Nothing about its framework would suggest that under the glass and blooms sit hidden tiers of deliciously moist chocolate cake, one of Rushina Mehrotra’s edible engineering marvels.

Mehrotra, 47, has spent the past 16 years building cakes for everyone from the Ambanis to Bollywood names such as Shahid Kapoor, Bipasha Basu and Farah Khan. Yet the founder of Andheri-based Daffodils Creations still describes her career as a happy accident. “I always wanted to start a business of my own, but I wasn’t sure what line I would work in,” she says.

She was no stranger to the world of entrepreneurship. Mehrotra grew up in a family where sweets were part of everyday life. Her father, Hasmukh Bhimjiyani, is the force behind Trupti Sweets, one of Mumbai’s longstanding mithai institutions, and conversations at home often drifted from family matters to discussions about quality, customers and the realities of running a business. “Growing up in that environment naturally influenced me,” she says.

But she was also drawn to sport. Back when she was a student at The Bai BS Bengallee Girl’s High School, in Churchgate, she spent hours at the National Sports Club of India in Worli, where she played snooker with her father.

What began as a father-daughter pastime soon turned competitive. Mehrotra went on to play at the national level during an era when women’s snooker in India was still a rarity. “There were probably fewer than ten women competing across the country at the time,” she says.

She even remembers defeating Anuja Thakur, the reigning national champion, a result that remains one of her proudest sporting achievements.

If her business instincts came from her father, she credits her creative side to her mother, Sudha. “She was a homemaker, but had an artistic bent”, Mehrotra says, of Sudha, who would handcraft Ganpati idols at home each year during the festival season.

An MBA in marketing at MET university in 2002 led to nearly a decade in corporate roles, but after the birth of her first child Aaryaman, now 17, she began to question that path. “I could have continued juggling work and family, but it didn’t feel fulfilling,” she says. Around the same time, she began noticing customized cakes gain traction abroad. They were becoming expressions of personality over just desserts. India, she suspected, would not be far behind.

That’s what led to the launch of Daffodils Creations in 2009, “from a small kitchen inside the Trupti factory in CP Tank,” which, often, just delivered one order a week. Things changed in 2011, when filmmaker Farah Khan tried one of her cakes at a party and commissioned one for Abhishek Bachchan’s birthday: a giant burger built around an inside joke, complete with fries, pizza and soda on the side.

“That order gave me the confidence to quit my job and pursue baking full-time,” Mehrotra says. Khan became a regular client and opened doors to a wider circle, resulting in commissions for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s productions to a life-sized guitar cake made for Ed Sheeran during a visit to Khan’s home.

Her husband, Amit, backed the leap, helping her set up a 250-square-foot studio in Andheri, closer to her marital home. “That gave me the freedom to build the business without financial pressure,” she says, of the studio that has, since, grown into an 1,800-square-foot operation with a team of 15, its own delivery service, and a weekly output of 150 to 200 cakes alongside dessert tables of macarons, cookies, doughnuts and French entremets.

One features a gym enthusiast mid-workout; another balances a construction-themed cake atop a boy performing a headstand. An ocean-inspired creation relies on the tentacles of a giant orange octopus to create the illusion that the entire structure is suspended in mid-air. Her goal isn’t just to make a cake look realistic; she wants it to feel alive.

That ambition often demands as much engineering as artistry. For Prithvi Ambani’s third birthday, son of Shloka and Akash Ambani, Mehrotra transformed a venue into a sugar-dusted Candyland. At its centre stood a jellybean globe surrounded by balancing figures, towering lollipops and gravity-defying sweets. For Kiara Advani, commissioned by Sidharth Malhotra’s team, she created a “Born to Shop” cake complete with miniature Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana storefronts.

Behind every creation lies a lengthy planning process. “Ironically, the planning often takes longer than making the cake itself,” she says. Conversations with clients can stretch across days as details about the occasion, guest list and personality of the celebrant are translated into a design.

For all the attention her creations attract, flavour remains non-negotiable. Belgian chocolate remains the bestseller because, as Mehrotra says, “it’s a crowd-pleaser”. Smaller gatherings leave more room for experimentation. Pistachio raspberry, Biscoff mango and mango ras malai rank among her most popular combinations, the last drawing inspiration from her family’s confectionery roots.

At home, conversely, there is no extravagance. Despite growing up surrounded by some of the city’s most elaborate cakes, her sons Aaryaman and Riaan, 11, are happiest with simple birthday cakes like cheesecakes.

And to her, after all these years, what still matters most are the reactions. The videos and messages that arrive after a celebration remind her why she began. “A cake is so much more than dessert,” she says. Each one is built for a moment that cannot be repeated: a child celebrating their birthday, a family reunited around a table, and a couple stepping into a new chapter. By the end of the night, little remains except crumbs and photographs. Yet those moments have a way of staying put, long after the sugar has melted away. “And that’s what makes it so magical,” she says.