Local baker Nilah DeLetto-Howard was in the remote town of Tofino on Vancouver Island when the news came to her that she had been chosen as the Critic’s Pick for the nationally recognized Greatest Baker competition.
The Greatest Baker competition receives submissions from pastry chefs, confectioners and home bakers who compete for the Greatest Baker and Critic’s Pick titles while raising awareness for The Andrew McDonough Be Positive Foundation. Brian Hart Hoffman, the competition’s critic and editor of Bake From Scratch Magazine, chose DeLetto-Howard’s Black Forest Gateau, a German chocolate layer cake topped with cherry syrup, over more than 200 other submissions.
“I thought it was kind of a throwaway,” DeLetto-Howard says of the gluten-free cake she had made for a friend. “I had wanted to make something cooler.”
She ultimately scored third place overall in the competition, an impressive feat for the young baker whose business, Honeybee Baking, recently celebrated its first year. DeLetto-Howard runs the “micro bakery” out of her kitchen, spending the week concocting new recipes and building up a stock of delicious goods to sell at farmer’s and artist’s markets around town.
After her career in the literary world was shaken by the loss of a book manuscript, DeLetto-Howard decided to step back from writing temporarily and focus on baking, a craft with deep roots in her family. “I wrote about 75–80% of a book, and then on my birthday my computer just died,” DeLetto-Howard says. In 2024, she officially registered as a business and began selling locally, and she hasn’t looked back.
Honeybee’s tagline is “Sensitivity, Ethnicity and Community,” all tenets that guide how DeLetto-Howard interacts with food and others, as well as her family. With an Italian and Scotch-Irish father and a mother from El Salvador, somebody was always baking in her home as a kid. “My mom always used to tell me when I was younger that ‘you want to be the person who brings the baked goods to the party, because everyone’s going to like you,’” she says.
DeLetto-Howard’s mom was famous for her New York-style cheesecake, and lit the spark in her early in her life. She saw how her mom’s dishes brought people together, and she wished to carry it on. When she grew up, she hosted watch parties for the Great British Baking Show, with each friend bringing a homemade treat in what she described as a “corny but fun” gathering.
“Feeding people is kind of my love language,” she says.
And she’s fluent in it. From pretzel croissants to homemade cardamom Pop-Tarts inspired by British tea time, DeLetto-Howard keeps a diverse and rotating menu that not only satisfies customers’ sweet tooth, but creates real connection as well.
“The big idea behind Honeybee Baking is the concept of the hive, getting the community to work together,” says DeLetto-Howard.
During the pandemic years, DeLetto-Howard supplemented her income by driving for Uber and Lyft. Having recently moved to Athens, the job gave her a cross-section of the lives of people in town.
“I met a lot of people who were kind of down on their luck, dealing with substance abuse or DV situations, which are both things that have affected my family,” she says. “I also met a lot of men who have gone through the judicial system.”
DeLetto-Howard says that the ultimate dream would be to open up a brick-and-mortar storefront in Athens and hire formerly incarcerated people to give them a second chance to get back on their feet.
Community is integral to what she does, and she says that Honeybee Baking probably wouldn’t exist in its current state without the support of the town it began in. Take DeLetto-Howard’s chai tres leches cake, a recipe from her mom, for example. While working the Wednesday farmer’s market at Creature Comforts, she often sells to out-of-state students who aren’t able to be with their families, and they say that her cake gives them a little slice of home in town.
“There are so many memories and good associations people have with food. I chose baking because everyone has to eat,” she says.
DeLetto-Howard is currently working as a baker for Epting Events in Athens, adding her own unique twist to the events they cater. She sees it as one step closer to her dream of bringing the community together through good food and real connection.
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