Nguyen Vu Hoang Anh making a cream cake.
At 35, Hoang Anh is the founder of a specialty cake brand in Ho Chi Minh City, known for crafting custom-designed cakes that not only dazzle visually but also tell rich stories and convey cultural values with every sweet slice. Inspired by iconic castles and classic artworks, his designs are artistic marvels that leave lasting impressions.
Hoang Anh's reputation began early, at just 23, he was a guest judge on MasterChef Vietnam. Since then, he has trained students both locally and internationally and collaborated with a wide range of global brands. Notably, he led the Buttercream category at the prestigious Cake Masters Awards, a global competition for cake artists.
But few know that his journey into the world of cakes began with simple curiosity. At 18, while studying at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, he happened to meet a neighbour with a passion for baking. Initially, he just watched, but eventually gave it a try himself.
"I've never had a sweet tooth," he recalled. "But when I saw the joy on people's faces as they received my handmade cakes, I was hooked."
What began as gifts for friends and family soon turned into a small cupcake business. As demand grew, so did his passion and skills. By day, he studied languages; by night, he baked and contributed cake-making tutorials to magazines.
After graduation, he chose to pursue baking professionally. With his first oven, a gift from his father, he began crafting intricate cakes from a modest home kitchen. He quickly became known for his hyper-realistic sugar flowers: roses, peonies, and tulips with near-translucent petals, all handmade using fondant, rice paper, chocolate, and, more recently, fresh cream, a notoriously difficult medium to sculpt with precision.
His wedding cakes, in particular, have made waves for their delicate hand-crafted sugar florals. Orders must be placed weeks in advance, two weeks for standard designs and up to a month or more for complex creations, allowing Hoang Anh the time to conceptualise, design, research, and execute his elaborate works.
In recent years, he has ventured into a lesser-known technique: cake sculpting. Unlike more common decorative styles, cake sculpting borrows heavily from visual art. While online tutorials typically show this technique applied to plaster, Hoang Anh adapted it for the far less forgiving medium of cake and cream, soft, perishable, and prone to melting.
Before sculpting, he envisions the entire design, from proportions and curvature to colour layering and overall composition. While a standard cake might take an hour to decorate, a sculpted masterpiece demands 3 to 4 hours of detailed, emotionally invested work. More elaborate wedding cakes can take anywhere from five days to several weeks, or even months, to complete.
"Technique can be taught," he said, "but what truly sets you apart is your ability to observe. You need to understand real-life structures, how flower petals bend, how fabric folds, to recreate them vividly on a cake."
His work doesn't just rely on technical mastery; it also reflects his Vietnamese heritage. One of his proudest pieces features a woman in traditional áo tứ thân and nón quai thao standing in a rice field, a tribute to rural Vietnam.
"I used to seek Western inspiration, but eventually realised there's so much untapped beauty in my own homeland," he shared.
Over the past 16 years, Hoang Anh has collaborated with major names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Uniqlo, Vietnam Airlines, L'Officiel, and Heritage. He was also behind the artistic cake featured in the film The Royal Bride 3 and in extravagant weddings hosted at five-star venues across Vietnam.
"Each project offers a new challenge and creative opportunity," he said. "It pushes me to grow both technically and artistically."
He notes that luxury brands have shown increasing demand for artistic cakes, often commissioning him to recreate signature products or as centrepieces for exclusive customer events.
One hallmark of his brand is the architectural precision in his cakes, particularly wedding cakes adorned with lifelike sugar flowers and detailed fondant structures. He has mastered shaping everything from roses to entire opera houses out of fondant, chocolate, and even fresh cream.
One of Anh's standout works is a cake replica of the Saigon Opera House
One of his standout works is a cake replica of the Saigon Opera House, crafted for a private Gucci event. The brief: recreate the iconic landmark in faithful detail, from its columns and carvings to its intricate dome structure. The result wasn't just dessert, it was art.