Billing for your bakery in Nagaland
Twelve Christmas cakes for twelve houses, the flour that runs low in advent and yesterday's buns, all in order.
Tools for a Naga bakery in the weeks before Christmas
Credit book (khata)
A page for the youth fellowship or the feast family that orders for its programme and pays after it, each delivery written on the page and each payment written beside the deliveries it covers.
Low stock warnings
A warning when the flour or the butter falls to the number you set, in the first week of advent, not in the last.
Orders to suppliers
The order for flour, sugar and eggs sent from the app, with a tick against each item that arrives.
Bills on your phone
A bill with a Christmas cake by the pound, a tray of rice cakes wrapped in leaf and a box of cookies, each at its own rate.
Daily reports
Each day of the Christmas weeks on a line of its own, to read when planning next year's baking.
Your own online shop
A page of your Christmas and New Year cakes, sent on WhatsApp in November so the orders come in before the ovens are full.
From one family's gift list to the shelf of day-old buns
The week between Christmas and New Year keeps selling
Open last December's cake and cookie lines for the twenty-sixth to the thirty-first. They tell how many cakes and how many dozens of cookies were still sold, and the oven is kept lit for that many instead of going cold on the twenty-sixth.
Rice cakes in leaf, made by the dozen for the feasts
Sticky rice cakes wrapped in leaf are made by the hundred for weddings and feasts. Make them an item sold by the dozen with its rate, and the feast orders show how many dozens each month takes, so the rice is soaked in time. Wedding families often order a second batch the week after, for the thanksgiving meal at home.
Cookies by the dozen carry the weeks after the cake exchange
When the cake exchange is over, cookies are what the houses still ask for. Make the cookies an item sold by the dozen with its own rate, apart from the cakes. After the season you see how many dozens still move, and you bake for those and not for the cakes that have stopped.
Fruit, honey and handloom: where a Nagaland bakery's customers come from
Bakers in Nagaland hear these names from customers who bring fruit, honey and cloth to the counter.
- Wokha is famous for oranges, passion fruit, plums and bananas, the fruit a Christmas cake or a fruit bun can carry.
- Phek makes honey, and grows kiwi, tree tomato and persimmon.
- Kohima has a seven-storey State Emporium Complex for Naga handloom and handicrafts, opened on 6 June 2025, where a gift shawl is bought along with the cake.
Twelve cakes for twelve houses, an oven that runs all night and buns that turn day-old
Twelve cakes for twelve houses, collected on twelve different days
In advent a customer comes to order cakes to give to her relatives, and not all at once. One is for this Sunday, one for the day after, three for Christmas Eve. You note it on a slip and promise. When she comes on a Thursday to collect two, you search the slips to see what she has already taken and what she has paid.
Two hundred buns promised and forgotten
In December the orders come by phone, by message and at the counter: two hundred buns for a church, a cake for a wedding, cookies for an office. They are written on scraps and on the wall, and on the morning of the twenty-fourth an order nobody wrote down is waiting at the door.
Advent cakes still on the shelf after Christmas Day
Christmas cakes are very popular gifts through advent, and the exchange of cakes goes on past Christmas Day and past New Year's Day. A cake baked for the twenty-fourth is still on the shelf on the twenty-sixth, and you do not know whether to bake more for the week after or to let the oven go cold.
Questions Nagaland bakers ask
A family wants its Christmas cake on the 23rd, a day early, because it leaves for the village. What changes?
Only the day. Change the day on her page to the 23rd so the oven makes this cake a day sooner, and bill it when she collects. Whatever she paid stays against it.
Can I see how many rice cakes went out for weddings last month?
Yes. The rice cakes are an item, so last month's days show how many dozens left, and each wedding family's page shows its own order.
The youth fellowship's order is collected by a committee member, not by the one who ordered. How does he show it?
The bill is on the fellowship's page and on the phone of whoever ordered. The committee member shows it at the counter, and you hand the order over against it.
A youth fellowship wants two hundred buns for the day of its Christmas programme. How do I plan the bake?
Count back from the programme date. Buns for a crowd are baked the morning of the programme, so ask for the flour and sugar the day before, and keep that morning's regular buns small.
Advent cakes and baking supplies: how a Nagaland bakery's year runs
Christmas cakes are very popular gifts in Nagaland during advent, and the exchange of cakes continues until Christmas Day and beyond New Year's Day, EastMojo reported in 2020.
The Little Baker in Dimapur, the first Nagaland store only for baking supplies, sold wholesale and retail to bakeries and home bakers and delivered to Kohima and Mokokchung, as reported in 2018.