If “A party without cake is just a meeting,” as Julia Child pointed out, eminent royal icing artist from Malaysia and founder of Vinism Sugarart, Kelvin Chua, is in the city to prove that an attractive cake can up the ante of any gathering!
Here to conduct four intensive courses in royal icing cake decoration at Lavonne Academy of Baking Science & Pastry Arts, Kelvin Chua is excited about his maiden visit to the country. “It’s great to be in a country that boasts so many promising home bakers. It’s wonderful to be able to impart my craft to people who are willing to learn,” he says, as he displays his masterpiece for the day, Glory, a beautiful blue three tiered cake with intricate 3D art, representing the national bird of our country.
“Over the next few days, I’m going to be teaching students how royal icing can be used in different ways and to create elegant looking cakes. So there will be a white wedding cake with a delicate tiara (people usually refrain from using royal icing to make fragile cake toppers), a good amount of piping, hand painting of cakes to give them a stained-glass effect, and stitching,” he adds.
Chef Kelvin is exclusively a cake decorator, and does not bake! The young pastry artist is in fact a graphic designer by qualification. “I worked in visual merchandising in Malaysia before I set off to the U.K., where I took up different kinds of jobs, mostly to pay my rent,” he quips, adding, “It was when I turned 30 that I realised I had to think of my future more seriously and do something I loved for a living. By this time, I’d had the opportunity of working at a bakery and even as a barista. I began taking part in cake décor competitions and realised the potential of this market and ultimately found my calling so I moved back to Malaysia in 2010 and began teaching.”
Today, Kelvin Chua travels around the globe, teaching at various pastry art schools. “Royal icing is a classic technique and in my own way, I am trying to revive its significance in the world of cake decoration. It calls for incorporating your own creativity and style to create something that looks as good as it tastes. To be a royal icing artist, one requires lots of patience and cannot afford to be short tempered,” he says.
Known to effortlessly segue between classic and contemporary in his works of cake art, Kelvin says, “One of the best things about royal icing is that it can even be used to create modern designs.” He personally draws inspiration for his works mostly from architecture and fashion.
Stating that he’s come a long way since he first started out on his own, Kelvin says: “I didn’t start off working only with royal icing but after a while that became my area of interest and specialisation. Also, luckily for me, design is design, and the medium hardly mattered. So from being a graphic designer to a cake decorator, the medium and techniques were the only things that changed. A job like mine requires a lot of practice to attain perfection so when I’m not researching on trends, or teaching, I keep working to better my proficiency.”
Quite impressed by the response of cake decorators who’ve come from different parts of the country to train under him, he says: “The sugar craft industry in India is still growing. Back then , interested folk would travel abroad to learn cake decoration but the way in which Indian pastry schools are bringing down international artists to teach so many people, is commendable. I’m glad that people here are not just satisfied with learning cake decoration online.”
Once he wraps up his India trip, Chef Kelvin will spend the rest of 2015 travelling to Moscow, Hong Kong, France, Germany, and Denmark to teach. Interestingly, he does all this on his own, which is why he likes to call himself a “lone ranger”!
