The award-winning baker who shuns trends to serve up local treats from her heartland kitchen

It's 8am on a Wednesday at a modest neighbourhood bakery in Ang Mo Kio. Customers shuffle in with a steady stream of requests for chicken floss buns and Swiss rolls, as well as the odd question or two about when the next batch of doughnuts will be ready. 

By the cash register, a simple sign lists options for waffle fillings. Above that, two plain black shelves are lined with 10 star-shaped trophies and plaques, which all tend to go unnoticed as customers debate between peanut or kaya.

Almost none of Cake in Action's hungry patrons seem to be aware that behind their favourite bakes is the newly-minted Confectioner of the Year – rising star Joanne Huang, who clinched the global accolade this July at the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners Awards 2025 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

At 44, she is the first Southeast Asian woman and the first Singaporean to receive the honour, a feat made even more impressive given that her baking experience spans just over a decade and she faced stiff competition including top pastry chefs from Europe. 

Ms Huang's demeanour, as sweet as some of her confections, can easily fool people into underestimating her.  

When we first spoke, she was dressed in a plain white T-shirt, her silver-brown hair pulled back into a bun, as she video-called me from the comfort of her home with a warm smile. 

The same easy smile welcomed me a couple of weeks later when I visited her bakery, where she chatted breezily with me while hefting multiple batches of dough adding up to 50kg around the kitchen. 

A cluster of ovens burned steadily behind her at 200 degrees Celsius, warming the air with the smell of butter and yeast.

Without missing a beat, she handed me a surgical mask for hygiene, rattled off the day’s to-do list, then returned to making a new batch of dough.

She spoke to me in a lively mix of Mandarin and English, pausing frequently to glance at the wall clock – despite the many timers in her kitchen, she is accustomed to personally keeping time for batch after batch.

Amid all this, she exchanged a few quiet words with her husband – 49-year-old Forest Lim, the bakery’s second-generation owner and president of the Singapore Bakery & Confectionery Trade Association. Mr Lim's father took over the bakery in 1981.

In Ms Huang's capable hands, which were kept busy kneading back-to-back batches of dough, the kitchen hummed nonstop for several hours straight. Firmly but gently, she directed the three baking staff on shift through calibrating temperatures and checking in on which items are selling faster than others. 

Watching her in her element, it's hard to believe that her journey as a baker began only in 2014, almost by accident. 

Originally from Taiwan, Ms Huang was a hip-hop dance teacher when she visited in 2011 on a month-long working holiday to teach at her friend's private studio about twice a week. 

She met Mr Lim during that 2011 visit at a nightclub.

"Within one month we got engaged, very fast," said Ms Huang with a smile. They married in 2012 in Singapore, the year Ms Huang moved here.

As a baker, Mr Lim was waking up for work at 2am or 3am each day. 

So while visiting her family in Taiwan in 2014, Ms Huang decided to do something to "ease his burden" in her own way: she learnt baking from a local pastry chef without her husband's knowledge.

"After I came back from Taiwan, I just told him, 'I'll show you how to do this cake.' He was so surprised – 'How did you know how to make a cake?'"

Ms Huang became a Singapore citizen in 2017 and is now a co-owner of the bakery with Mr Lim. The couple have three children aged nine, 11 and 13 – the younger two spent their day off school flitting in and out of the bakery's kitchen when I visited.

It was an apparently unremarkable day in Ms Huang's life, which, she said, hasn't changed at all since her recent award. Some of her staff are not even aware that she won. 

Nevertheless, the recognition means more to her than her easygoing nature might suggest. 

"Winning this was encouraging for me," she told me in Mandarin. "It was an unexpected surprise – I really didn't think I'd get it."

So why enter a competition she gave herself little chance of winning? 

"Our goal was to help raise the profile of Singapore's baking industry," said Ms Huang. 

"Singapore is quite close to places like Taiwan and Korea, but when people think about bread, they don't immediately think of Singapore."

RISING TO THE OCCASION 

By mid-morning, the first batch of buns is neatly laid out on the shop's shelves. Cakes topped with colourful figurines – Doraemons, Minions, even a Spider-Man – wait in the chiller for customer collection.

Ms Huang moves on to her next task: making baguettes, with dough mixed with a century-old sourdough starter gifted by a fellow baker.

I am well aware that my lay knowledge of baking – gleaned mostly from failed macaron attempts and cooking shows – pales next to Ms Huang's expertise. Even so, I find myself even more confused than expected watching her put ice cubes in her baguette dough and mix in the century-old sourdough starter.

Ms Huang tells me that's not about being on-trend, but rather mixing in a bit of sourdough starter makes the bread more moist and digestible for people with gluten sensitivities or who are prone to bloating. 

No 100 per cent sourdough offerings, though. "We're a neighbourhood bakery," she explained. "Our customers are mostly seniors, who often have dental issues, so we primarily offer soft bread."

Her baking education didn't stop at attending professional cake and bread courses. Ms Huang has also paid heed to Singapore's palate, including the local fondness for more "simple" bakes compared to fancier Taiwanese offerings with more adventurous flavour combinations.

Still, she has found ways to bring Taiwanese flavours to Singapore's heartlands. She is especially proud of her taro pudding cake and black forest cake, which use yams and candied cherries from Taiwan respectively. 

It's this thoughtfulness in her baking that led the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners Awards 2025 to commend her as a representative of "a new generation of pastry chefs who blend tradition and modernity with remarkable sensitivity".

Ms Huang likened the Confectioner of the Year award to winning an award at the Oscars. Rather than a live competition, those in the running must meet criteria including being a business owner under 50, having competed nationally and internationally, and being featured in the media. 

Their submissions are reviewed and voted on by presidents from more than 50 member countries of the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners. 

Past winners include Taiwan's Wu Pao Chun, who was named World Baker of the Year in the 2016 contest. Being placed in the same category as industry heavyweights such as Wu have given Ms Huang a "healthy sense of responsibility", as she put it.

Mr Wu's Wu Pao Chun Bakery has two outlets in Singapore at Holland Avenue and Orchard Road. 

Ms Huang still returns to Taiwan to visit her childhood home of Taichung and meet with suppliers a few times a year, but her roots, she said, are now firmly planted here.

Seeing the Singapore flag raised and hearing the national anthem play during the Sao Paulo ceremony, she admitted, brought tears to her eyes.

"There is a bit more expectation, of course, but (the award) also brings renewed motivation," she said. "I feel inspired to continue growing, refining my craft, and supporting my team."

THE FUTURE OF SINGAPORE'S BAKES

Rather than basking in the glow of the global award, however, Ms Huang seems far more content to focus on the humdrum tempo of her little bakery.

Upstairs in the cool room of the shophouse, she piped pink buttercream roses onto a cake. Quickly and confidently, she turned out one little spiral after another – her movements steady and rhythmic, as if she were listening to music though none was playing. 

Recalling her past as a dancer, I asked if it was hard to pick up a completely new set of skills so far removed from that background.

"Not really," she said, hands still moving. "I just thought it was fun. When you do it, you also have a sense of accomplishment."

It takes her less than five minutes to envelop the entire cake in neat little flowers.

Her husband, Mr Lim, said he is proud of his wife's ability to clinch a global award despite a relatively short tenure in baking. 

Even after winning the award, Ms Huang said her hip-hop roots still seem to loom larger when people try to guess her vocation. 

“When I go out with new friends and they ask what I do, they think I'm in fashion or design," she laughed. 

"I tell them, 'No, I make bread.' They'll go, 'Huh? You don't look like it!'"

That's not to say Ms Huang is all work and no play. Her favourite time of day? "Getting off work," she said with a grin. 

Asked about how she and her husband split the work, she adds, half in jest, she doesn't exactly prefer to make bread – but rather that he prefers not to. Still, they manage to divide and conquer, with him taking on the cakes and helping out wherever he is needed.

That playful streak of hers sometimes results in questionable decisions. On one forearm, a looping cursive script spells out: "I Love My Family", while the other arm reads "Forever and Ever". It was her first tattoo, inked on a whim by a tattoo artist friend while she was in her 20s on a night she had imbibed a little too much alcohol.

Despite the tattoo's impulsive origins, its message clearly still resonates 20 years on, as she slips seamlessly between the roles of baker, wife and mum. 

In the bakery's kitchen, she proves to be a master of matronly multitasking. She mixes up dough, cuts buns and directs staff – all while fielding curious questions from her children about the day's bakes and sending them on little errands like buying sugarcane juice for the team.

When I let slip that I haven't had breakfast, she immediately ushers me to the shelves and recommends the coconut bread (coconut freshly fried in-house) and the Nonya curry chicken bread. Scarfing down the latter option, I was pleasantly surprised at how light the bread was, despite my low spice tolerance and not being that big a bread fan.

I was also glad for the fuel, but even as a mere observer of the hive of activity, my legs had grown weary from from hours of standing and watching Ms Huang tirelessly conquer the countless tasks of her day. 

After all, despite her unwavering smile and chipper conversation, the bakery business is not all sugar and smiles. 

Soon, longstanding concerns that have hit national headlines in the past year enter our chat, as many small food-and-beverage businesses struggle with rising rents and manpower constraints. 

Ms Huang said the bakery can go through 40 250g blocks of butter in a single day, which has become much more expensive over the years. Even so, the couple insists on using local suppliers where they can and have not increased their prices for three to four years now.

Even with business doing reasonably well, they have found themselves unable to scale through expansion. 

"When we were thinking about opening a new branch, the rent for half a shop was around S$12,000 (US$9,190) a month," said Ms Huang. "We started calculating, including manpower, employees, equipment, (but) the costs were too high."

"Singapore has so many unique, small family-run shops like (ours), but costs just keep going up, up, up. In the end, only the big corporations can survive."

Ms Huang's own children seem to be well at ease with wandering around the kitchen now but she empathises with the reluctance among younger generations in taking up jobs like hers. 

"Young people don't like this kind of work because the hours are early, long, it's tiring, and they'd much rather work in an office." 

Candidly, she added: "If it were my own child, I'd tell them not to do it either. I'd tell them, 'You didn't go to university just to work in a bakery, right?'"

Still, beneath the pragmatism is a quiet hope – that while her own children may end up choosing other paths, the craft she loves will continue to grow, and that her win for Singapore might help make that future a little sturdier.

As we stopped to take a photograph of her for this article at her shopfront, Ms Huang adjusted her white chef's jacket, holding her plaque in one hand and a freshly decorated cake in the other. 

Around her, the bustle of an Ang Mo Kio afternoon continued, with aunties and uncles pausing to inspect some breads in the display window before rolling their market trolleys to and from the nearby Kebun Baru Market and Food Centre. 

It painted a curious but endearing picture, one where polished professionalism meets hometown heart.

It's precisely this complementing contradiction that makes Ms Huang so compelling. 

"Her win showcases that you don't mean you have to be doing very 'atas' (or highbrow) products like croissants," said her husband Mr Lim. "Even if you're from a traditional background, you can also be on a global platform."

As for Ms Huang, she hopes that her win will shine a new international spotlight on Singapore's pastry and baking talent.

"We have a vibrant, diverse culinary culture, and I hope this recognition encourages more appreciation for our local artisans and inspires aspiring bakers to pursue their craft with confidence," she said.