Kat Lieu grew up believing “Asians didn’t bake.”
“My mom rarely baked,” explained Lieu, founder of the popular FaceBook group known as Subtle Asian Baking and author of an upcoming book, in a Zoom interview. It wasn’t until she moved to Seattle and had her own kitchen that her baking journey began.
It would be even longer before Subtle Asian Baking was born. Subtle Asian Baking, which originally started as a Facebook group, has become a global community of over hundreds of thousands of people online and was founded when the pandemic began.
“It’s a COVID baby, a pandemic baby,” remarked Lieu. When the group started in 2020, it was meant to be a platform for people to share culinary ideas during a time when eating out was virtually nonexistent. “I think it was as a means for people to gather and all bounce ideas off of each other and learn from each other,” said Lieu. She attempted the ‘Asian way’ to make … all these goodies that brought us comfort during these hard times while we’re isolated at home.”
This “Asian way” meant decreasing the sweetness in traditional desserts or modifying the dessert to suit the taste and echo elements of her heritage. “I’m not as fond of really sweet fondant or really sweet frosting. Things that you grew up loving eating or things that bring you comfort…all affect how you bake too. [That’s] why I want to make [desserts] the Asian way.”
This baking community has now expanded out to Instagram, where she boasts 138,000 followers, and TikTok, where she has over 2.9 million likes. Currently, Lieu is in the process of publishing her new book called Modern Asian Baking at Home: Essential Sweet and Savory Recipes for Milk Bread, Mooncakes, Mochi, and More, where she provides an Asian twist to popular contemporary desserts. It will be released on June 21, 2022 (click here to learn more about the book and pre-order).
Lieu also uses her platform to give back to the community. She is aiming to raise $10,000 from February to May for Asian communities. She has also already raised $30,000 for other causes, including the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. “It’s not just all about the Asian communities, because I want to really let people know that Subtle Asian Baking… is inclusive and diverse.”
Serving diverse purposes, Subtle Asian Baking provides a platform for Asian Americans to pay tribute to their heritage and normalize greater cultural representation of food in society.
For now, Kat Lieu is going to continue baking, writing, and creating new recipes to share with the Asian community and the world.
Images provided by Ms. Kat Lieu.