How a Cake Becomes Clay: The Story Behind Clayying’s Handmade Ceramic Cakes🍰🧱
A small story from Ying
Childhood Cakes in the Window
The inspiration for Clayying didn’t begin in a studio.
It began somewhere much smaller.
When we were children, our family was always busy with the ceramics business. Birthdays, for us, were something distant and slightly ceremonial. We rarely had birthday parties, and almost never had a cake of our own.
Our earliest memories are not of candles and wishes, but of the workshop.
My parents spent long days surrounded by plaster molds and buckets of thick clay. They would pour the clay carefully into molds, wait for it to dry, trim the surfaces, and carve patterns into half-dried forms. The air was always dusty, and the sound of carving knives spinning against clay echoed through the room.
While they worked, I would quietly play nearby with Zoe.
When the adults weren't looking, we would sneak a little clay from the pit and make our own tiny creations. Sometimes it was a fish, sometimes a flower wreath, sometimes something strange and unrecognizable.
And sometimes, we made cakes. 🍰
Not real cakes, of course.
Little clay cakes with clumsy decorations.
When our parents and grandparents loaded the kiln, we would secretly try to slip our creations inside. We even tried stealing glaze colors from the shelves to paint them.
It rarely ended well.
More often than not, we were chased away before our masterpieces could be fired.
Years later, Zoe and I have grown up and started our own paths. But when I look back at those summer afternoons, the wind blowing through the hills while we cried over broken clay toys, I sometimes wish time had paused for us there.
This is the large machine currently in my studio.
Why Cakes?
People often ask why I chose cakes as the central theme of my work.
The honest answer is very simple.
There isn’t really a reason.
Creating pottery sometimes feels very similar to making music. Imagine picking up a guitar on a quiet afternoon. You don’t plan a song. You simply hum a melody because you feel like it.
No purpose. No explanation.
We don't question why we breathe at this moment.
Creation, to me, follows the same logic.
The cake shape simply arrived one day and stayed.
Perhaps it carries a little memory of childhood.
Perhaps it is just playful.
Or perhaps clay itself enjoys pretending to be something sweet.
The Quiet Frustrations of Handmade Work
Waiting is an unavoidable part of ceramics.
You knead the clay.
You shape it.
You decorate it.
Then you wait.
The clay slowly dries until it reaches a semi-dry state. After that comes coloring, glazing, and finally firing in the kiln.
But here is the difficult truth about pottery:
Sometimes, after all that waiting, it cracks.
Or worse, it shatters completely.
No matter how carefully you prepared it.
For ceramic artists, this is a familiar heartbreak.
Clay teaches patience in a way very few materials do.
But it also teaches acceptance.
Why Clayying Cakes Are Never Exactly the Same
In the beginning, my clay cakes were very simple.
They were solid blocks of clay.
They came out of the kiln beautifully, but they were heavy and awkward to hold.
Later, I began experimenting with ways to create hollow structures. By allowing certain materials to absorb the clay during the process, I could build cakes that were light inside.
Eventually, my 10cm × 10cm cakes weighed less than 400 grams.
When you hold one, it feels surprisingly delicate.
After that came another long obsession: piping techniques.
At first I couldn’t even pipe the "cement frosting" properly. The lines were uneven and the texture looked awkward. But slowly, after many attempts, I began to improve.
There was a period when I stepped away from some of my painting classes and devoted most of my time to the cake studio.
Sometimes I would tell Zoe very seriously:
"I’m going to adjust the color of my frosting."
She would look at me and laugh.
"You've completely disappeared into your own world."
Perhaps she was right. Because in reality, there I was standing with a bucket of cement, calmly declaring that I was about to whip cream.
But that strange little world is also where I feel the most peaceful.
Pottery has a way of pulling you into a quiet state of focus. And in that flow, many of the uncertainties of life seem to soften.
My cakes have slowly become more popular.
Yet every time I open the kiln and see a new batch, I still feel that the previous ones were not good enough. There is always another idea waiting to be explored.
Maybe that is also why I stay calm when I see people reposting or imitating my videos online.
In some way, I suppose it means the cakes have begun to travel.
How Can an Artwork Carry Joy?
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure.
I rarely deal with the commercial side of things. Most of the outside communication is handled by Zoe. The world moves very fast, and sometimes I jokingly tell her that handmade artists probably belong underground somewhere, quietly making things.
I am simply Ying.
Someone who enjoys beautiful objects.
Someone who spends long days shaping clay.
Someone who doesn’t carry grand ambitions about changing the world.
I just hope to carve out a small corner of it.
A tiny utopia made of clay, color, and imagination. 🌿
And if one of these little cakes can bring even a moment of happiness to someone’s day, then that is already more than enough.
Thank you for visiting Clayying.