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The Saigon boy has a talent for making Hermes, Chanel bag-shaped cakes
Nguyen Anh Triet in Ho Chi Minh City is famous in the baking community for his talent in simulating Hermes and Chanel handbags with birthday cakes.
Started making many kinds of cakes 9 years ago, but in the past 3 years, Nguyen Anh Triet (HCMC) has become famous in the Saigon pastry world thanks to his ability to shape cakes. Triet’s cakes usually have a special shape, sometimes decorated elaborately and magnificently, but also sometimes simulate branded goods, most notable handbags of world luxury fashion houses such as: Hermes, Chanel…
Nguyen Anh Triet has a knack for making cakes to shape designer handbags. Photo: NVCC
Passion for shaping cakes
Shaped cakes are not a completely new field, but each baker who joins this market, if he has his own impression, is always noticed and sought by many customers. Triet has a modern aesthetic and is almost a skilled baker of designer handbags. Triet accepts orders to make cakes according to customer requirements, each cake usually takes about 8-10 hours to complete.
The process to create a branded bag cake is no different from a normal cake. The required stages include baking, shaping, cutting, wrapping and making exterior decorations. The last step is to color the cake. According to Anh Triet, the most important step to have a beautiful finished product is to shape the cake because if it is not done well, the cake will be distorted and not authentic.
The feature of real branded bags is that the leather is very shiny, beautiful and flawless. Therefore, whether a baker’s skill in shaping is good or not is shown through the kneading and shaping of this skin. Triet said that to make leather bags, he will have special tools. The secret is often shared by him in baking workshops with the tuition fee of about 9 million VND/person for two consecutive days of study.
A Hermes Birkin bag in progress. Photo: NVCC
Chanel bag-shaped cake. Photo: NVCC
When making cakes, Anh Triet also has to learn about leather bags to understand their structure, making the bag more beautiful and authentic. Crocodile skin, togo leather are popular types. But ostrich skin is the most difficult to simulate because of the rounded spots of the feathers. Normally, these pores will be inclined at an angle of 42 degrees to the surface and in the middle there will be a hole through the skin. These hairs are distributed very evenly and beautifully, but recreating the cake version is not an easy task.
Triet likes to make Hermes bag-shaped cakes the most. This type of bag is both easy to make because of its sharp square lines, but also difficult to have intricate patterns, like Kelly ostrich or Birkin Himalaya for example. After creating the pattern, Triet also had to color it to be as close to the prototype as possible.
Hermes Kelly ostrich leather bag. Photo: NVCC
Cakes for connoisseurs
The cream cake base of the branded bag cake that Triet makes has two types: vanilla and chocolate, both of which are common ingredients. However, their price is not cheap, the largest type (30 cm) costs 4.5 million VND while the smaller type (20 cm) costs 3.6 million VND. Thus, it can be seen that the price of cakes is mainly calculated on the cost of shaping, requiring workers to be meticulous and elaborate.
Ms. Le Van, a customer in Saigon, who has bought shaped cakes many times said that she really likes these cakes because they look like works of art. The bags are very similar to the real thing, but they can be cut and eaten, surprising her. Moreover, she herself is very fond of branded goods, so on special occasions, she is often bought as a gift by her relatives, or personally, she gives them to friends who have the same interests as her.
Although the price of the cake is very high, according to Ms. Van, it is a worthy result for the efforts of the workers to find and improve their skills. To do so, they have to spend many years of practice at a great cost of learning.
In addition to branded bag-shaped cakes, today, many bakers are also constantly innovating to make cakes with unique shapes. It can be a haughty princess, a mini forest, a majestic waterfall or even a supercar the whole world wants. There are cakes that are so authentic that many people confuse them with models produced in factories.
Of course, to have a beautiful and quality product, it requires customers to pay a small amount of money. Therefore, shaped cakes are often called “connoisseurs’ cakes”.
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The Saigon boy has a talent for making Hermes, Chanel bag-shaped cakes
vinlove.
Source: vinlove
