Gen Y Speaks: From home bakes to pro cakes — how opening my own shop taught me to reframe my relationship with doubt

It started with a YouTube video.
The year was 2015: During the long wait between junior college and university, I spent my afternoons coaching softball part-time, which meant that I had ample time to kill in the mornings. 
One morning, a cupcake tutorial by CupcakeJemma popped up on my explore page. Not a lot of people know this, but I’ve got a string of disastrous baking attempts on my record from when I was younger. Even now, I don’t really know what it was that made me want to try out that video — a need to scratch some creative itch? Boredom? A bit of both? 
Whatever it was, this particular batch of cupcakes came out great, much to my own surprise, and got positive feedback from family and friends. 
I immediately started trying out different flavours and variations, fascinated by the way the simple concept of a cupcake could produce countless end results. Within a few months, I was hooked. My baking output quickly outpaced the rate at which my family and friends were consuming my bakes.
At that point, I plucked up the courage to create an Instagram page to sell my bakes, soon upgrading from cupcakes to simple cakes. Receiving orders was so exciting; each one was an opportunity to feed my growing interest in baking. 
Looking back on them, I now think those first bakes were horrible — but hey, we all start somewhere. 
All through university, I spent my weekdays in classes and my weekends baking orders. I appreciated the small side income my “hobby” provided me but, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t have any concrete idea of what I wanted to do with it. 
Doubt loomed in my mind: “Am I good enough to pursue this as a career? Where can this business go? If I commit to this, what will the next few years look like?”
Upon graduation in July 2019, I told my mum and dad that I wanted to take a stab at turning my home-based side hustle into a full-time job. 
It took my practical-minded parents some convincing, and I had to make some concessions: I promised them that, should the business not work out after a year, I would pack up my spatulas and find a “regular” corporate job instead. 
Confession: I wasn’t sure I was making the right decision at the time. For all my attempts at allaying my parents’ doubts, my own lingered — but all I knew was that I needed to give my passion for baking a fair shot.  
For the next six months, I poured countless hours into recipe development and took on as many orders as I could to grow the business. Frosted by Fang was a one-woman show, and I had to very quickly learn to wear multiple hats at once: Logistics manager, social media marketer, business administrator and customer service officer, all while furthering my own baking self-education.
Then Covid-19 hit. 
The world came to a standstill — but my business got a sudden boost. In the midst of lockdowns and minimised socialisation, sending care packages became the new norm, and my mixed dessert boxes, which now included brownies, cookies, tarts and more, quickly became a hit.  
Coming out of the pandemic, I did my very first pop-up at Baker X in mid-2022. It was the first time that I could interact with customers in person, a human element I had been missing as a home-based business. A couple for whom I’d done an order of gender reveal cupcakes in 2019 dropped by with their little one in tow — and it struck me hard how gratifying it was to be, through my bakes, a part of people’s lives and cherished milestones.
By then, I’d managed to save up enough to enrol in a two-month pastry course in Bordeaux, France — my first brush with formal baking instruction after years of being entirely self-taught. 
Being able to work in a larger kitchen with industrial equipment sparked a new dream in me: Could I one day have my own space to bake in? The spark became a flame when I returned to Singapore and realised that my business demands had outgrown the production capacity my home kitchen could offer. 
Despite the success I’d seen up till then, Doubt’s nagging voice lingered in my head. Setting up any kind of physical store would be an uphill task unlike anything I’d faced before, comprising mounds of paperwork, logistical dilemmas and nightmares, and endless planning. But I knew the only way to overcome my reservations was to just bite the bullet. 
After a long and rocky location scouting process, I finally found my dream spot in Joo Seng Green, but the space itself was not fit to run a food-and-beverage business in — which meant many more months spent getting approvals for licensing, appropriate alterations and fittings, and so on. 
With a lot of help from my family, friends and partner, the shop slowly but surely started to take shape. In August 2023, I officially opened its doors for business.
My little shop is the hardest thing I have ever done, and it’s still early days, but I have not regretted my decision one bit. With the addition of a physical location, the number of hats I wear has practically doubled. It’s overwhelming at times, but I have never felt more fulfilled. 
The learning curves along the way were even steeper than I’d anticipated, but I never would have gotten anywhere without them. Every mistake allowed me to better the business and myself. 
My mother also came onboard as my first (and only) full-time employee, handling front-of-house service in the store. As we grow older, work typically takes us further away from our parents — but I’m grateful for all the time being in the store has allowed my mum and I to spend together and how much closer we’ve gotten because of it.
My store also gives me the chance to get to know the residential community and even make friends with many of my newfound regulars. Frosted by Fang would not be where it is today without their generous love and support. 
Sometimes I do think it would be nice to have some of the things a “regular” corporate job affords my peers — paid time off, medical coverage, weekends free to spend with loved ones, among others — but ultimately, these are sacrifices worth making in pursuit of my passion for baking.
Where will my little “hobby” take me next? I don’t know for sure — but I’ve learnt to accept that my old friend Doubt will still be a visitor from time to time, dropping in and making his uncomfortable presence felt. 
Rushing to dismiss him in hopes that he will disappear doesn’t work, though. Rather, I’ve learnt to sit with him for a while and the questions his presence brings, so I can focus on assessing what is within my control and what isn’t. 
More than that, I’ve learnt not to let Doubt stop me from taking action. The more I do and the more knowledge and experience I gather, the more I can build up my own courage and, eventually, my visitor will naturally take his leave. 
It’s okay to be afraid; what matters is you do it anyway. 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lee Su Fang, 27, is the founder of Frosted by Fang. She has a degree in communications and media studies from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.