Yummy House Bakery

  
Hong Kong style cakes and breads
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522 6th Ave S         International District   
or 515 S Weller St 
206 / 340-8838                           website
  
-English and Cantonese spoken      


Interview with owner, Karen Poon

Yummy House Bakery is a family business now in its second generation. Today, Karen Poon runs the business with her brother. 

"I'm the owner, but I always say I'm the manager. It's my parents’ originally, and now they're retired and now me and my brother, we took this over..."

The family moved to Seattle from Hong Kong about 15 years ago.

"Before, when we were still in Hong Kong, we never even touch bakery; we don't know anything about it.  And then, when my dad came over, and the first few years he worked at a bakery.  So then he learned something about how to bake, so then we invented our own style of cakes."

Yummy House’s baked goods are “Hong Kong” style--but with a twist.

"It's still Hong Kong style, but there are so many different ways to make the cakes.  And the buns, even though it's all Hong Kong style, but there are different ingredients, different steps that you do.  It's pretty much a secret, but then we use a lot of egg whites, compared to other Hong Kong style bakeries.  We use a lot more egg whites than others.”

sponge cake

Those egg whites have a leading role in Yummy House's top-selling item:  “Sponge cake.  It's kind of like our signature item.  It's a very traditional style.  We fold the paper, sponge cake paper, in a little cup, like a little metal cup.  We have three different flavors.  It's very fluffy, soft.  Not dry.  We sell average on this, on weekday, we sell 300 to 400 a day.  By the late afternoon, then it's out.  We have customers, they would order sponge cakes like a month ahead, just to make sure.”

The same light but firm sponge cake is also the base for Yummy House's "Hong Kong Style" layer cakes.

"The flavor of our cakes is more fluffy and light, less sweet, I would say.  And we tend to use more of the fresh fruits instead of all these sugar and frostings.  So like right now we do mango, strawberries and blueberries.  If it's the next season we might change it to honeydew, taro.  So it depends on the season.  Mango is always the best.  It doesn't matter where you're from:  mango is always the most popular.  Strawberry, it's the second.”

Yummy House also has special cakes for New Year and fresh mooncakes for the Moon Festival.

“For Hong Kong, Chinese New Year, we do have some sweet cakes.  For Moon Festival, we have mooncakes.  We make everything in the store, so ours are fresh.  There’s a lot of different flavors.  There’s like lotus seed, white lotus seed, red bean, red date, black dates, green bean, then there’s yolk in it--it’s the duck yolk.”

Chinese wedding cakes, or “wife cakes” are filled with lotus seed or bean paste and are surprisingly small.

“Because they give it out as a gift.  So it’s not where you put it in your wedding banquet or your wedding ceremony; it’s not that.  Yeah, ‘cause the American style one they have the whole wedding cake set out and they cut them and then right they serve it to their guests.  but these are different, you do it before everything starts.  So the husband’s side, the groom’s side, will buy all these cakes to give to the bride’s side.”

In addition to ornate and festive cakes, Yummy House has an everyday range of breads and buns for informal snacking.  A couple of these old-fashioned buns that aren’t exactly what they might seem.  One is the so-called “pineapple bun”.

“It doesn't have pineapple filling in it, but it's the crust that looks like a pineapple, so in Hong Kong people call them pineapple buns.  These are like the very traditional Hong Kong style buns.”

Another one is the mysterious “Mexican bun”, an old Hong Kong favorite.

“I would say it's a little creamy, it has a little cream.  Sweet...and it has no filling it, so it's just the top, the sweet top.  I don't know why it's called Mexican bun, but in Hong Kong, it's always called Mexican bun.  I had a Mexican worker; I asked her, So do you guys have this in Mexico, and she said, Yes, the flavor is very similar.  So I'm thinking maybe it's from Mexican people that brought it to Hong Kong many years ago.  So I'm not sure but I'm thinking.
  
“They've been around for so long, but people don't really make them anymore, I think, in Hong Kong.  And now, some of the customers that we have, they are about, maybe, 50s, and then they came and they were like, Wow, you guys have Mexican bun!  So they remember and maybe when they were a child and they said, Wow, I used to have this, and you guys have it!  

“So maybe you could do some research and let me know about it?”