Presenting You Some Little Secrets We Know About ‘The Little Tea Shop’ & Its Owner, Shazley!

The Maldivian community is blessed with incredible home-bakers who continue to put amazing sweet treats on our tables every single day. Among these talented bakers is Aminath Shazley Mohamed Didi who owns ‘The Little Tea Shop’ – famed and loved for spectacular buttercream cakes and other sweet treats.  

Shazley’s ventures as a home-baker began seven years ago when she reached an impasse at her ‘office job’ as she was struggling to clock-in regularly due to a chronic illness. Nevertheless, even at her resignation, she was determined to do some sort of work from home and thank god for us sweet-tooths that home-baking popped up to her head!  

Having baked for various occasions prior to this, this was not a new arena for her. This time however, she was taking things up a notch with a bold dream; opening a small place to serve her sweet treats that is of a ‘tea shop’ style. In order to achieve this dream, Shazley began to bake from her own kitchen – armed with social media to market and sell her products and along the way, it became a hit!  

While she puts out some amazing cakes, brownies, toffees and profiteroles for her customers – her buttercream cakes definitely takes the crown as her best work. Not only do they taste heavenly, in appearance, they are almost too pretty to be eaten. When decorating her cakes, Shazley used her disadvantage of being not-so-good at smoothing cakes to her advantage by giving her cakes an intricate rough-textured look to fit minimalistic designs. The distinctive style has become so trendy that it is even a source of inspiration for other bakers in town.  

Nevertheless, there is a guilt Shazley carries in the course baking as it involves using a lot of plastic – something which breaks her heart as an avid lover of the environment. Whereas she tries to minimize the use plastic wherever possible, it is impossible to lower it to zero. Hence, another dream she dreams of is a much more sustainable baking industry.  

For Shazley, her biggest achievement in her seven-year journey is that she gets so much requests for cakes than she could actually accept. As much as she would like to cater for everyone, one important thing Shazley has learned in her seven years as a home-baker is the importance of time management which is a perfect balance between time for work; friends and family and self.  

Although ‘The Little Tea Shop’ might not exist just yet, it is not too far from becoming true – and when it happens, it will be legendary.