A small kitchen in NIBM-Kondhwa, and a long argument with cake.

It began in a Pune apartment in 2019, with a borrowed hand-whisk, a bag of cake flour from the corner shop, and the kind of week that ends with someone deciding the only honest thing to do is bake a proper cake — by which we meant: one that tastes of vanilla, not vanilla "essence."

The first cake was dense, oversweet, and the wrong shape. The second was worse. By the twenty-third, the batter had taught its baker how to wait, and that, mostly, is what a good cake is.

In 2021 a friend-of-a-friend was selling a deck oven a pastry chef had used for eight years in Aundh. It was forty-something years old when she retired it. It is now eight months older than that, and it is what bakes every cake on this site.

It runs hot in the back-left corner and cool along the door. We have not corrected for this in twelve years. We rotate the tin at the seven-minute mark, and again at fourteen.

In 2023 we moved into a shop on the ground floor of BRAHMA MAJESTIC, on NIBM Road, Kondhwa. It is quieter than people expect from a place that sells birthday cakes. There is one wooden table, two stools, six things on the wall.

We open at 7:30 on weekends because that is when the cyclists come down the road wanting tea cake. We close at 21:00 because that is when the kids get hungry.

We will not use food colouring brighter than a sunset. We will not bake the same cake twice exactly — the oven has its own opinions. We will not put a screen in the shop. We will not run a "loyalty programme" — if you come back twice, we will already know your name and the cake your daughter chose last year.

We will quote on custom cakes within twenty-four hours, we will deliver across Pune, and we will keep the music quiet.