Jacinta Yu
After a career in fashion in New York City, Jacinta Yu decided to answer a long-harbored calling: a personal passion for beautiful cakes. Now the proud owner of Complete Deelite, a bakery and cooking studio in Central, she tells Derek Bullen and Saloni Jain why she takes inspiration from her dentist, and how Hong Kong is playing catch-up in the world of desserts.
On Getting Started
I never really planned this. I didn’t do baking when I was young. As a child, I loved celebrating and I still do. I loved to host parties and decorate everything. When I was at college, I’d always look in the bakeries and see the cute cupcakes. I just felt like I wanted to give this a try, and that’s how it all just happened. It was a gut feeling. Coming from a fashion background, I just liked to admire things that were decorated and done beautifully.
On Baking
Baking is everything. Wherever I go I notice new unique things, and I try to blend them into my baking. When I go to see my dentist, I’d ask him about his tools. And then I think that, “This tool will be great to decorate with.” Baking is a big part of my life. It’s an art.
On Big Projects
I wanted to create something more three-dimensional [for an exhibition at Elements to promote Tin Tin’s 83rd birthday]. My cake (pictured) was so big that we were wondering if it would fit in the car or in the lifts, and bringing it there was really a hard task. Every [part of the cake] was edible apart from the wooden boards on the bottom, and the stand.