THE CAKESMITH

Little did DESERÉE SMITH know, writes JON WALL, that when she opted for the role of housewife it would lead to TV shows and a burgeoning career as a creator of extraordinary confections

SHE’S A FAMILIAR face to TV viewers and readers of Apple Daily, who know her as “The Party Expert,” but Deserée Smith has more recently been making a name for herself among a select group of friends and acquaintances, as well as a handful of high-powered corporate clients, as the purveyor of bespoke gateaux. From her kitchen in the hills behind Kowloon now streams a cornucopia of sugary desserts, everything from tiny taste-bomb cupcakes to large-scale productions that look as if they need a truck to transport them, and all conceptualised and created by her alone.

“When I was younger,” says Smith, “I never cooked. I started after I got married when I began preparing food for parties. I taught myself from scratch, through books and Internet research. We had this group of friends who liked to party at home, and all the guests brought a bottle of wine, but because they all worked, nobody brought any food.”

As Smith was the only one who, as she puts it, “didn’t work,” she decided to be a little more creative. “So I began baking cakes, which everybody loves, just a little dessert that no one can resist. The reaction was very good and I was encouraged.”

She then began making bigger cakes – featuring everything from motorcycles, electric guitars and aeroplanes to corporate logos – to match the theme of the celebration. “Just to add a little fun. And then I began making a cake every week for my mother, so I could test my recipes on my family. I don’t like to make the same cake all the time, so I told myself that if I’m going to spend time doing something, every time I make a new one I want to learn something from it, to improve my skill set. So I do that every week, and from a little cheesecake it’s grown into a monster.”

Born in Hong Kong and educated in Vancouver, Smith worked in her family’s businesses – antique furniture and manufacturing ceramics – and as a corporate communications consultant with the Miramar group, before settling down in the more traditional role of a housewife after marrying her American husband Greg.

“I wanted to create a home,” she says, “so I started picking up on Western cooking. I wanted [Greg] to be able to have what he had back in America – and he loves his food. His mother entertains a lot – she’s a socialite in Denver, heads up a lot of charities and raises a lot of money – and she was a big influence on me, because my mother doesn’t cook. So I watched her, how she entertains, how she sets the tables, how she brings out all the beautiful silverware, flower arrangements…And I started doing that myself, setting out the table and making everything beautiful…”

Curiously, it was Smith’s new-found domesticity that brought her into the public eye, as local newspapers began to get wind of her increasingly elaborate arrangements for Thanksgiving and Christmas parties, and sent photographers round to the house to shoot them. And when her husband, who speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, was interviewed by Cable TV commenting on Hong Kong’s future, one of the team got the idea of asking Smith to do her own show.

“They called me after Greg’s interview and we met at the InterContinental [Hong Kong],” she says. “I told them we do these parties, when I cook a full American dinner, make the appetisers, mix the cocktails, roast the turkey. And they said, can I do a show for them? I’d never done TV before, but I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ And by the time we’d finished talking they said, ‘Why don’t you do four?’ So I had four shows, one a week, throughout the month of December, and one of them broke the ratings.”

That led to an hour-long live Internet spot for the Apple Daily website. “I thought, one hour live, are you joking? And then I got on their website and I saw that they invited people like the executive chef of the InterContinental on to the show. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is Deserée, who is not a chef…’ And they don’t know what to call me, because I’m not the executive chef of the Smith residence either. And they said, ‘Well, since you organize all these parties at home, why don’t we call you the party expert?’ Pai dui zhuen ga.”

In addition to Cable TV and Apple Daily, she now works with TVB, NowTV and RTHK, for which she effectively has carte blanche to do whatever she wants. So how on earth does Smith, who admits to staying up all night when baking her most extravagant confections, fit the cake-making into an increasingly frantic schedule?

“It’s on my mind 24/7,” she says, “but when I’m doing my cooking show, I have to put it away. At the beginning, just to make the cake itself with very minimal decoration took me three days, as I don’t have a commercial kitchen or a team of people to help me. Over time I’ve started to gain momentum, so that now I’ve been doing it for a while I understand the process. If I’m under pressure I do something generic, but I like to do research if I have the time. And that can take weeks. And after that I have to decide how I’m going to interpret it into a cake. It’s like making a piece of art, seriously. It comes from zero, there’s no mould for what I do. I literally do it from scratch.

“The reason I don’t promote the cakes that I make right now is that it’s always been my indulgence, and so far it’s come from a really good place, because I do it for my friends and I like to keep it that way.”

As for inspiration, Smith says she gets it from the very people she’s creating a cake for. “I look at you,” she says, “and there’s a cake. I have to interpret you as…a cake. It’s fun. I’m trying to make the cake that you’ve never had – and if you can buy the cake that I make, then I won’t make it.

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