Ajsel is how you write Aysel in Bosnian and Albanian — the j carries the y sound, the same way Ayla becomes Ajla and Ayşe becomes Ajša. Same name, two alphabets. That is more or less the whole story of this kitchen.

It is an old Turkic name: ay, the moon, and silig, pure or radiant. Moonlight. It became popular in Turkey on the back of a 1933 novel and the film made from it the year after, which was scripted by the poet Nâzım Hikmet.

Aysel has decorated cakes professionally for more than twenty years, most recently as a decorator for a grocery chain, where she learned to work fast and consistently at a scale most home bakers never see. She speaks Turkish and most of the Balkan languages, and she bakes in both traditions — which is why there is revani and hurmašice on the menu and not much else you’ll find nearby.

She ran this business once before. It was profitable and it was quiet — not enough people knew about it. This time the cakes are the same and everything around them is different.

It is a family operation. Her daughter does the figures and the sculpting, one son bakes, another handles the phone, and someone drives. Nobody is pretending to be bigger than that.