YeoMama Club:
Yeo Min
Meet Yeo Min, a dedicated food enthusiast with a deep passion for preserving culinary traditions.
As a pastry chef, she authored Chinese Pastry School and runs her own business, Pastories by Yeo Min. Alongside her love for baking, she channels her creativity into music.
Explore her vibrant world and the exciting projects she's working on.
Congratulations on your recent engagement! Can you share a bit about yourself?
Thank you!
I’m a pastry chef and social worker by training, and I’m now a freelancer working on food and food heritage projects. I wrote a book titled ‘Chinese Pastry School’ and run a small business from home called Pastories by Yeo Min. I also play and write music!
What does a day in your life look like?
Everyday is different, though they all begin with feeding my dog first thing in the morning and giving her a brush and a dental chew right before bedtime!
My days are typically spent in the kitchen, working on my laptop, or meeting with partners. I spend more time in the kitchen when there are cake orders or during popup seasons.
Between those seasons, I spend more time doing food research for various projects, or just out of interest. I’m currently spending a little more time dreaming up a food museum concept with my friend and taking active steps to turn that into reality!
You recently launched a Chinese pastry recipe book. What inspired this journey?
Chinese Pastry School was written out of a fear that we might lose this part of Singapore’s heritage food in the near future.
I was reaching the end of my pastry school journey and looking for Michelin Star or French pastry internships in 2021, when I heard the news that a 90-year-old Hokkien pastry shop, Tan Hock Seng, was about to close for good. It struck me that I’d spent my last year trying to learn everything about French pastries, but knew little about my own heritage pastries.
I thought about what I could do, and came to the conclusion that I would have to take matters into my own hands!I realised that it’s a lot harder to learn how to make Chinese pastries than it is to learn to make French pastries because there isn’t really a “school” for it yet. The knowledge was all out there, somewhere, but to learn the techniques and science behind the craft would take a lot of research.
My solution was to write a book that’s structured like a pastry school book (think Le Cordon Bleu and Ferrandi’s publications), but packed with knowledge from the Chinese pastry world.
Can you tell us about your favourite recipe from the book and why it's special to you?
One of my favourite recipes is the first in the book — for making maltose, or 麦芽糖 (mai ya tang).
It starts with sprouting wheat, then using the naturally-present enzymes to break down cooked glutinous rice into sugar. It’s such a simple but cool way of making a sweetener at home, and this recipe has been around even before Confucius’ time!
It was one of the first recipes I tested, one of those that took me multiple tries to achieve, and one that constantly reminds me to look to the wisdoms of the past.
Balancing music and cooking must be quite a task. How do you manage your time between these passions?
I have a lot of fun jumping between these different parts of my life! What scares me more is being stuck in one line of work and not being able to have fun. Both music and pastry make me very happy, so it’s usually quite ok keeping up with both!
Do you have any upcoming projects or goals in either music or cooking that you're excited about?
I’m quite excited for the rest of 2024, because I have a book trip to London and Paris happening soon and I’ll be filling the space at Baker X from mid-October too! For longer term plans, I’m working to bring my food museum to life.
What advice would you give to young people who want to pursue multiple passions like you?
Just go for it!
Society likes to define us by our 9-5s but we really are so much more. Not all of us were made for a single line of work or interest — some of us definitely thrive off pursuing different goals at the same time.
I used to fear that I’d lack focus if I didn’t give up some of my interests, until I realised the full jack-of-all-trades quote goes like this: "a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”.
In your own words, how would you describe YeoMama Batik to a friend?
There’s a print and cut for everyone — you have to try it on for yourself!
(I have successfully converted two, maybe three very stubborn, block-colour people in my life, into YeoMama Batik wearers, so I know :))
