After launching the new cake series in September, shop owner Karu received dozens of orders. She isn’t afraid of criticism from the anti-protest camp.

“This is creative freedom,” she said in a recent interview with Chinese-language media outlet Apple Daily. “I shouldn’t have to be afraid of any backlash.”

Her first creation features protesters’ signature yellow helmet and a pair of protective goggles; a cloud of “tear gas smoke” floats above the cake.

For the fan-favourite Lion Rock Cake, Karu added a string of lights on top to represent hikers who formed a human chain on the mountain. She also attached banners made of sugar sheets, which have protest slogans printed on them in edible ink.

Other cakes in the series include one featuring a bride wearing a yellow helmet, goggles and gas mask, and another featuring a “Lennon Wall” with a collage of pro-democracy messages handwritten in different fonts and colours.

There are a variety of flavours to choose from, including original sponge cake with strawberry jam or blueberry sauce, or chocolate sponge cake with hazelnut cocoa sauce or chocolate sauce.

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Customers can also opt for a customisable neon cake topper, which pays homage to Hong Kong’s neon signs.

“I noticed lots of cake toppers in the market are written in English. I thought using traditional Chinese characters or Cantonese slogans would make customers feel a sense of intimacy,” Karu says.

BYJ.HK

Famous for its stunning mirror-glazed creations, BYJ.HK recently began offering pro-protest cakes with popular slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong; revolution of our times” and “five demands, not one less” hand-painted using traditional Chinese calligraphy style.

Patisserie chef Jay Ng painstakingly paints on the surface of the cake to create glossy desserts that are almost too beautiful to eat.

“The cakes we make have always been more artsy and appeal to emotions, so we combined our craft with elements we always saw from the movement in our cakes,” she said. “I think you can express your feelings through the meaning of the words and the way you present the characters.”

Ng, 25, opened the shop two years ago and sells around 150 cakes per month.

She said each calligraphy cake takes around an hour to decorate.

To paint the words on the cake, Ng and her team first chill the cake and then pour mirror glaze over the dessert. They then use tools such as scrapers, brushes, and sometimes even chopsticks, to make patterns before the glaze solidifies. Once the glaze sets, they start writing characters on the glossy surface.

Although some designs can be time-consuming – a glaze with a portrait of Canto-pop singer and pro-democracy activist Denise Ho Wan-sze take three hours to create – Ng finds the calligraphy cakes much more challenging. “You can usually fix mistakes made in drawings but that is not the case for calligraphy,” she says.

Even though Ng and her team have a background in Chinese calligraphy, they spent a month practising writing on cakes.

“Writing on cake is a completely different concept. Your hand doesn’t need to be in the air when writing on paper,” Ng says. “You have to practise holding your hand steady and being patient because it takes much longer to write on cake.”

Foodie Buddies

Hongkongers have transformed Pepe the Frog into a pro-democracy symbol, despite the cartoon’s racist and anti-Semitic connotations elsewhere in the world.

Described by creator Matt Furie as “chill frog-dude”, Pepe became a popular meme on online forums before he was adopted as an unlikely alt-right icon in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election.

Dismayed Pepe had become a symbol of hate, Furie “killed” the character in 2017 with a comic strip depicting the sad, green frog in an open casket.

But images of Pepe continue to pop up all over Hong Kong – in graffiti, sticker packs on WhatsApp and Telegram, and on baked goods.

Foodie Buddies started making Pepe cakes and macarons in March due to his popularity on social media. Once the protests began in June, however, the baking workshop began using Pepe to “express their concern” for the movement, co-owner Sammi Ng said.

Now in its fourth year of operation, the workshop holds dessert-making classes for 15 to 20 people – the teachers are bakers with almost a decade of experience. Classes are about 80 per cent full during long weekends and holidays.

Ng, 30, says speciality cakes take around three hours to make, and sculpting characters with fondant is the hardest part.

“There is no specific blueprint for reference, as the Pepe design requires a lot of imagination. You need to be meticulous and careful to make the character look alike,” she says.

Despite the emergence of other protest mascots, such as the LIHKG pig, which first appeared as a set of emojis on LIHKG, Hong Kong’s Reddit-like online forum, Ng says Pepe designs are still the most in demand.

“Pepe is more well-known, while LIHKG pig only became popular over the past two months. There are also more Pepe designs, so most customers will pick Pepe cakes or choose to combine the two characters,” Ng says.