Nazish Omar bakes her way to Bollywood

With 3 years in business, Deelicious Nazish’s Kitchen has quickly made its way to the top with its unique flavours.

LAHORE:

Located in Tooting, London, Deelicious Nazish’s Kitchen is a small, tucked-in, patisserie and café doing wonders with its eye-pleasing and finger-lickin desserts. Run by a Pakistani, Nazish Omar, the dessert shop is well-known for its wedding and event cakes but more so, for its stellar client list that includes celebrities from Bollywood, sports as well as politics.

After graduating from Cambridge University with an MPhil in Management and a Masters degree in Health Finance from New York University, Omar went on to pursue her love for baking. “I’ve always enjoyed baking but I never thought I would take it up as a career,” she says. “I enrolled myself at Le Cordon Bleu [renowned culinary institute] and started making birthday cakes and cupcakes from home.”



As word of mouth spread, Omar expanded her business and opened a shop three years ago. “I figured it was more professional to have a formal shop rather than just bake from home because then people take you more seriously,” asserts Omar. “My husband and I live in Wimbledon, and Tooting seemed like a good option to open up my outlet.”

While she offers cakes including traditional ingredients, she also enjoys experimenting with different flavours — incorporating Eastern ingredients with ones from the West. Her eggless and gluten-free cakes have also found themselves a great market. “While I do the regular chocolate, vanilla and red velvet, we have some unique flavours too, like ilaichi-flavoured cheesecake, apricot cheesecake, pistachio cardamom cake which tastes like a barfi,” explains Omar. “Along with this, we have a mixed nut tart that tastes like halwa and rose-flavoured macaroons and cakes.”

Her unique flavours have resulted in a line-up of notable celebrities outside her doors for orders. “We just did petit fours for Ed Miliband’s (Labour Party leader) party,” says Nazish. But that’s not just it. This little eatery has made bespoke cakes for Bollywood celebrities like Bally Sagoo, Bipasha Basu, Shaan, Malaika Arora and Atif Aslam, amongst others. “It was really exciting meeting Dharmendra, Bobby Deol and Sunny Deol when I made their cake for Yamla Pagla Deewana,” she shares. Laung Da Lashkara singer Hard Kaur is also an alleged fan of Deelicious Nazish’s Kitchen along with sports stars Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza, who also called upon Omar’s services while in London.

“It is really fun making cakes for celebrities,” confesses Omar. “We meet and sit down for a food tasting [session] and decide the concept of the cake they want.” She excitingly reveals that her next client is the superhero heart-throb, Hrithik Roshan — she will be baking a cake for his upcoming film, Krrish 3.

With her experimental approach and artistic talent, Omar is quickly becoming a preferred confectioner for wedding cakes. “We were so impressed with what Nazish created for us,” say recent clients Jaimini and Brijes. “Everybody complimented the taste and style and no one could believe that the cake was eggless.”

Another couple, Sheneen Gani and Dr Saifullah, also seemed quite impressed. “Our cake was inspired by the lilies on the invitation. The same lilies were hand-painted on my shoes so it was kind of like a theme,” says Gani. “The cake was spectacular and only Nazish could have made it so perfectly.”

With top caterers like Sapna Caterers signing on Omar as their preferred pastry chef and cake supplier, Deelicious Nazish’s Kitchen continues to make memorable cakes for her clients. However, it is her dream to bake a cake for superstar Shahrukh Khan one day.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2013.

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