A Cake Affair
Jessica Teo isn’t your typical baker. She graduated with a Masters in molecular biology and worked as a lecturer for almost 6 years before she tripped and fell into the business of baking. It was her son’s first birthday and she wanted to bake him a cake and decorate it herself. She never imagined that this decision, made on a whim three years ago, would literally change her life and career.
With no baking or cake decorating experience, Jessica sifted through the internet for recipes, then tried, tested and tweaked them before coming up with her first masterpiece: a simple butter cake decorated with clouds, airplanes, and a garden full of flowers, bumblebees and ladybugs. For someone who had never taken an art class in her life, Jessica’s first attempt was nothing short of impressive. Her dogged determination to capture every detail to make her creation look as realistic as possible was the result of many failed attempts but the end result was worth it. It was an instant hit at the party, not only because of the decoration but also because the cake actually tasted good. Really good!
It may have been just a birthday cake for her son at a
home party but Jessica was determined to go the whole nine yards when it came to baking the cake itself, choosing to use only premium quality ingredients to get the right texture and flavour. In fact, it took almost a year from that day before she finally got her butter cake recipe just right and, perhaps being a tad nostalgic, this remains her favourite sweet treat.
As a self-taught baker and cake decorator, Jessica relies almost completely on video tutorials, pictures and TV shows for inspiration. Her hidden talent as an artistic genius is quite astounding as her creations have quantumleaped over the last few years into bigger and more elaborate designs. From simple and sophisticated to bold and colourful, every cake is crafted to taste as good as it looks to make sure her clients get the perfect sweet sensation to top off a special occasion.
Apart from the traditional butter cake and cheesecake recipes, Jessica is starting to experiment with local flavours and giving them a new twist. Her onde-onde cupcake is a pandan cake flavoured with concentrated pandan extract for that natural light green colour. It’s then filled with gula melaka and shredded coconut in the middle and topped with coconut whipped cream, more shredded coconut and drizzled with gula melaka.
It would be interesting indeed to see how she incorporates these unique flavours into her more elaborate cakes and cake decoration. Jessica started her home-based online business, A Cake Affair, last year and now works full-time churning out amazingly delicious works of art to glam up any occasion. •• FB: @Acakeaffairbyjessicateo