Sarah turns her hobby into a business entity

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THE discovery of her mother’s old oven marked the beginning of Sarah Lim Mei Mei’s foray into cake baking.

What first started out as an experiment later turned into a hobby, which then became a passion and a business entity for the self-taught fondant cake designer.

“I was searching for things at my late mother’s house and came across this oven.

Concentrating: Sarah carefully adjusting fondant designs on a cake.

“I took it home and decided to test it out,” said the 31-year-old, who has named her baking venture as “Sarah Homemade”.

Having awoken the baker within her, Lim later tried her hand at cake designing and two years ago, started to design fondant cakes as well.

“Fondant is sugar coating used to sculpt or decorate cake. I did not know much about fondant cake designing at the time.

“I browsed through online forums and interacted with some of the fondant artists there,” she added.

Lim said the first fondant cake she made was for a friend’s birthday.

“A year later, I made another cake for the same friend except that it was for her wedding,” she added with a grin.

Until four months ago, Lim was working as a clerk at a goldsmith shop in Ipoh.

“I told my husband that I wanted to quit my day job in order to pursue a career out of my interest. He was quite excited about it.

“While I was only able to do what I love most at night then, I can do this the entire day now,” said Lim.

Operating from her home in Bercham, the mother of two young boys took pride in her work and accepted up to four orders only each day.

Sporty design: A birthday cake with the Ferrari logo.

Making a big fondant cake with intricate designs, especially multi-layered ones, can take up to five hours to complete.

“Just making the sugar-paste to decorate cupcakes takes about an hour,” she said, adding that three-dimensional designs were much easier to make compared to two-dimensional ones.

While 3D replicas were more realistic and easier to sculpt on, 2D images had their restrictions especially when it came to creating detailed textures, she said.

“I post all the photographs of the cakes I make on my Facebook page.