Romanian cake maker Nicoleta Chirtu has been named one of the “Top 52 Successful Women in Essex” with her delicious cakes and, invited to BBC studios to present her high-end creations, brought in a show-stopping 15-layer chocolate gateau.
“I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to be featured in the March issue of Essex Life magazine, in the <52 Great Essex Women> series. For me, this is the most beautiful Martisor (Eds: gifts which women in Romania receive on March 1) I received this year”
Nicoleta comes from Bucharest, where she worked as an Authorized Evaluator Anevar EPI. She lives in Chelmsford, 15 miles northeast of London where she moved in 2022, after her husband received a job offer there.
She started making cakes to order in 2023 and quickly found a market in the local Romanian community in the Essex area under the ‘Baked by Nicoleta’ name, a home-based bakery business. But her success went beyond that.
With her passion, she transformed baking into an art form and impressed British journalists with her artisanal creations. In the last 18 months she has been invited to the BBC studio in Essex twice and was recently included by Essex Life magazine in the “Top 52 Successful Women” for the county .
“I’ve never been a cake maker but since childhood I enjoyed making all kinds of cakes. I cut out delicious recipes from my mother’s magazines and my biggest dream was to open a cake shop in Sector 3 of Bucharest,” Nicoleta Chirtu told Ad UK.
Nicoleta’s cakes extend way beyond traditional Romanian cakes. Victoria Sponge Cake, Lemon Drizzle, the most English of cakes, and Entremet cakes are part of her repertoire.
She also bakes 16 types of cupcakes and says she uses premium ingredients: “Including Belgian and French chocolate (Callebaut, Valrhona), Barry/Van Houten cocoa, 100% pistachio paste, pure fruit purées, Madagascan vanilla, and rich 82% premium butter.”
Here’s the giant chocolate cake she brought to the BBC studios.
There are about 1.5 million Romanians living in the UK.
