From Nepal, by way of Hampshire, with love.
I’m Nilam — an NHS nurse, a wife, mother of two, and a self‑taught baker. This is the long version of who’s behind your cake.
I bake the way my mother taught me.
I grew up in a Nepali kitchen where sweetness was always restrained. We didn’t pile sugar onto things; we let the cardamom, the rose, the cream and the fruit speak. When I came to England, the first thing I noticed about cakes here was how sweet they were — almost too sweet to enjoy a second slice.
That’s the cake I set out to not make.
My family came to Hampshire because my father served in the British Army — like generations of his family before him. Eversley felt like home almost immediately: the lanes, the tea-tin colours of the cottages, the quietness. We’ve been here twenty years now.
Becoming an NHS nurse was the natural next step — looking after people is what my parents taught me. The baking started years later, in lockdown. A pistachio rose cake for my eldest’s seventh birthday. Friends asked. Then their friends. Then strangers from Instagram. Little Oven grew, very slowly, by word of mouth.
“Less sugar. Refined buttercream. Cake the way my mother taught me — finished by hand, the day before your celebration.”
Self‑taught means everything by hand.
I never went to pastry school. I learnt piping from books, YouTube, and ruined first attempts. That’s why every cake takes me longer than it might in a bakery — because every rosette, every drip, every Lambeth shell is piped by me, not extruded by a machine.
I don’t keep stock. I don’t freeze layers. I bake the morning of the day before your celebration, crumb-coat, chill, and finish the decoration in the evening so the buttercream is at its best when it leaves my kitchen.
A family business, in the realest sense.
My husband Tom helps with deliveries on Saturdays. Our two daughters are the cake testers — they’re painfully honest. My mother still sends me notes from Kathmandu about whether the cardamom is enough.
Little Oven is small on purpose. I bake about 15 cakes a week — birthdays, christenings, anniversaries, small wonderful occasions. If you’ve found us, hello. Tell me about your celebration.
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