Growing up in NYC’s Chinatown, I was surrounded by one of the most vibrant food scenes in the world. I had a major sweet tooth, and I loved experimenting with the Asian flavors I grew up with. That curiosity turned into a career: I earned a culinary degree in pastry arts, worked as the pastry chef at my school’s fine‑dining restaurant, L’Ecole, and was later invited to join the faculty as a pastry instructor. Not long after, I opened my own cake shop, Silk Cakes, in 2006—known for Asian‑inspired flavor combinations you couldn’t find anywhere else. After more than a decade in business, the pandemic forced me to make the difficult decision to close in 2020. When I did, I felt lost—and unsure what was next.

Then my health changed. After being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, eating gluten‑free became part of how I took care of myself. But the harder part wasn’t giving up gluten—it was what came with it: showing up to birthdays, dinners, and celebrations and feeling excluded and feeling like I was making things difficult. One day, on a simple grocery run, I walked down the cake mix aisle and noticed something was missing: the Asian flavors that I grew up with.

That’s when Roots in Rice was born—Asian‑inspired, gluten‑free cake mixes made to a pastry‑chef standard. Roots in Rice is my way of raising the bar for gluten‑free dessert—so people who eat gluten‑free for their health don’t have to feel like the exception when cake comes out. My goal is simple: make gluten‑free cake that everyone actually wants a piece of—so you can belong at the table again.