From dancing to baking champ

WHEN Joanne Huang picked up baking over a decade ago, she did not expect it to become her life’s work. What began as an act of love to ease her baker husband’s workload ended up taking her to the global stage.

In July, the 44-year-old Singaporean received the World Confectioner of the Year 2025 award at the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners Awards in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Although she sees herself as still a rookie in the industry, she is the first South-East Asian woman to earn the title.

She learnt how to bake in 2014 to help out her husband, Forest Lim, 49. She watched him wake up five days a week at 2am to make curry puffs, doughnuts and egg tarts before delivering them to seven school canteens.

Pregnant with their second child then, she could only help with packing and accompanying him on his delivery runs.

The couple and their son, then two years old, lived in an HDB flat above Lim’s family bakery – founded in 1979 as New Generation Confectionery in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 1 – while waiting for their own flat to be ready.

Born in Taiwan, Huang moved to Singapore in early 2012, after a whirlwind one-month romance with Lim, whom she met while working has a dance instructor in November 2011.

She married him in May the following year and became a stay-at-home mother.

“It pained me to see my husband working so hard and I wanted to find some way to help him,” she recalls.

Up till then, Huang, who has a certificate of study in applied foreign languages from the Overseas Chinese University in Taichung City, had worked only as a dance teacher.

With no baking experience, she suggested creating an online platform specialising in customised cakes for special occasions, which were then becoming popular. Lim handled production while she managed their Facebook marketing and orders.

“Right there and then, I knew I wanted to learn cake-making first to ease his burden,” she says.

Secret plan

After giving birth to her second child in March 2014, she took both children to Taiwan for a month in November, telling her husband she wanted to visit her family. It was a cover for her plan: an intensive two-week cake-making course at a bakery school there.

“The timing was right. My mother was able to help look after my children while I attended classes and learnt how to make cakes. I wanted to surprise my husband when I got back.”

On her first morning back in Singapore, she prepared whipped cream and decorated a cake her husband was supposed to work on. Surprised by her new skills, he supported her decision to continue attending bakery classes here and urged her to enter competitions.

She eventually worked alongside him full time.

Today, her creations – cakes, shio pan and sourdough loaves –sell out regularly.

Winning the global award in her 11th year of baking marked a milestone she had never dreamt of, says Huang, who hopes her win will motivate younger bakers.

“I want people to know, you can be working in a neighbourhood bakery and still have the opportunity to earn global recognition, if you have passion and belief in what you do.”

Lim says: “When she initially told me she wanted to learn baking to ease my workload, I didn’t expect her to progress to this level and excel.

“She is always finding ways to improve her baking techniques and expand her knowledge, despite our daily workload at the bakery.”

Before she became a baker, Huang taught hip-hop dance to adult students in Taiwan for five years. She had picked up dancing on her own and later joined a dance group.

“I love dancing,” she says. “I don’t have stage fright. It has helped me have the confidence to take part in baking competitions.”

Baking appealed to the same creative instincts. “I like to create and try out new ideas, and see if customers can accept them.”

Becoming a Singapore citizen in 2017 strengthened Huang’s resolve to make baking her career. That same year, she entered her first international competition in Taiwan, creating a pineapple tart shaped like ang ku kueh and was placed third. 

Bread came next in 2018. “I realised that to help my husband modernise his family’s bakery, I needed to understand bread thoroughly,” she says.

It took her six months to master bread-making, beginning with the basics like proofing, kneading and shaping loaves, before she started incorporating local ingredients, such as laksa leaves and curry leaves, into the dough.

Marrying trend and tradition

A major renovation in 2018 transformed their 796 sq ft heritage bakery into today’s sleek-looking shop, which was renamed Cake In Action By New Generation. The couple invested S$180,000 in the makeover, outfitting it with afour-tier deck oven and industrial cake mixers. They also consolidated their online customised cake platform and physical bakery.

One of the biggest hurdles was her father-in-law, who valued old-school loyalty to their long-time suppliers.

Huang recalls modifying their doughnut recipe using a higher-quality locally milled flour from a different supplier. 

“My father-in-law questioned me on the need to use flour, which cost 20% more than the one he had been using for years,” she says.

The matter was laid to rest after he found that the new flour rendered well-hydrated dough, resulting in moister bakes and favourable feedback from regulars. Convinced the bakery was in good hands, he handed over the reins to the couple that year.

As the bakery opens daily, they have no weekly day off. But she and her husband make it a point to take two days off monthly, which they use to run errands.

She says their love is not built on grand gestures but simple acts of thoughtfulness, such as her husband helping to mop the floor at home or taking her for a leisurely Taiwanese breakfast at one of her favourite eateries on their day off.

“We see each other daily and spend nearly all our waking hours together, but we still get along and enjoy chatting with each other,” she says.

Full-blown arguments are rare. “We always find an amicable way to resolve any differences.”

Lim says: “Having her by my side in life and in work puts my heart at ease.”  

“You can have lofty ideas as a baker, but at a neighbourhood bakery, being practical is key,” Huang says.

“In the Central Business District, baked goods must be trendy to keep up with the younger working crowd. But at a neighbourhood bakery like ours, we focus on product consistency because we depend on regulars.”

But she insists on using better-quality ingredients at the expense of higher profits. “I want to use high-quality ingredients, and I am willing to earn less because my goal is to give my customers baked goods they can eat with peace of mind and feel satisfied with.” — The Straits Times/ANN