The delicate flowers that adorn Siew Heng Boon’s 3D jelly cakes appear so fragile that it’s certainly difficult for anyone to eat the jelly cake lest the artistic masterpiece gets destroyed! Boon, who goes by the name of Jelly Alchemy on her Instagram page, is an Australian artist residing in Sydney.
So beautiful and intricately designed are Boon’s 3D jelly cakes that it’s hard to imagine that she started making them only two years ago and went commercial. She learned cake making when she spent some time in Malaysia. Getting impressed by the 3D cakes, typical in that country, she took 3D jelly classes to learn the basics of cake designing, coloring, and flavoring.
If you think jelly cake-making doesn’t require a lot of talent, think again. It requires all the skill at one’s disposal and Boon has got oodles of it. She starts with a clear seaweed jelly, hardens it enough to be able to put the design on its surface. She then uses a syringe to inject edible dyes into the jelly. She mostly uses natural coloring, but also small amounts of artificial coloring in some cases.
For creating different shapes and objects, Boon uses various implements. For example, for flowers like dahlia, she uses a standard syringe and a steady hand, whereas for roses she uses a spatula-like tool attached to the syringe and a totally different technique. Once she finishes the design, she pours a hot layer of jelly over the cake to seal it.
This back-breaking job requires hours of toiling. A typical 3D jelly cake takes around four hours to finish. For designing, Boon’s favorites are the classic floral motifs and even fishes and other objects. And it’s not only the art on the cake that’s beautiful, but the taste, too, is simply superb. Each of her handcrafted cake is one-of-a-kind.
Today, Boon has her own artistic jelly cake business and offers her cakes in various flavors, such as coconut, lychee, peach, pineapple, rose and others. Depending upon the size and design, the price ranges from $25 to over $100.
Jelly Alchemy: Instagram | Facebook