The Girl Who Creates Hyper-Realistic Cakes

Nguyễn Hồng Đào once studied accounting, but she quit her job just a month after starting because she didn’t enjoy it. Unexpectedly, she discovered her true passion while working part-time at a pastry shop.

Đào recalls that while working as a sales clerk, her boss would occasionally ask her to write messages on cakes or fix small details before delivery. “From that moment, I started to feel connected to cakes,” she said. “I realized I was more suited to butter and sugar than to numbers.”

During her pregnancy two years ago, Đào decided to formally study cake decorating so she could later earn a living from home while taking care of her child. The 1.5-month course taught her the basics, but to go further, she had to experiment and teach herself.

“Decorative cakes are much more expensive than regular cream cakes. I live in a small town, so to sell them, they can’t just taste good — they have to look amazing,” she explained.

At first, without any customers, Đào kept baking anyway. She photographed her creations and posted them online, asking family members to taste and review them. Her stunning and unique cake designs quickly caught people’s attention, and soon she received her very first order — a mother wanted an Elsa castle cake for her daughter’s birthday.

Although she had never learned to make that kind of cake, Đào decided to give it a try. She spent several days researching materials and techniques. Buttercream, she found, couldn’t hold sharp details; fondant melted easily in room temperature. Eventually, she discovered gumpaste, a medium that was durable, heat-resistant, and perfect for shaping.

“At that time, I didn’t care about the money,” she said. “I just wanted to make a cake that satisfied my customer and fulfilled my passion.” When the client received the castle cake, she was thrilled — she said it looked “giant, vivid, and almost real.”

That first success opened the door to even more ambitious requests. One friend asked Đào to create a wedding venue cake as a birthday gift for a wedding planner. Initially, Đào refused, thinking it was too difficult, but the client encouraged her: “I’m sure you can do it.”

The project involved hundreds of tiny details. The biggest challenge was how to make the cake stand upright since the base was too soft to support structures. In the end, Đào’s husband built a small frame out of bamboo sticks, while she sculpted the curtains from paper paste. She even spent hours searching for a reference photo of a real wedding setup to make her miniature version more lifelike.

When the customer saw the finished cake, he was speechless. “Everyone at the party was stunned by how realistic and beautiful it was,” he told her.

Behind every sculpted cake, Đào says, lies a personal story. One of her most memorable creations was for a girl who ordered a cake for her mother — the owner of a flower shop. To make it special, Đào asked for a photo of the store and recreated it in exquisite detail on the cake’s surface.