Baker's unique creations lead to fame and business opportunities in capital suburb

Jinpoluo village in northeastern Beijing has boasted bountiful harvests of millets for centuries and now a dessert chef, Liu Tiantian, is adding her brand of sweetness to the place by using the ancient grain to make Western-style desserts.

In February 2022, she opened the SiiKoo Patisserie near the west end of the village. It sells her inventive menu of millet cookies, millet pudding, hawthorn berry cakes and chestnut Napoleon pastries, along with classic pound cake and croissants.

Nearly two years later, Liu, 35, said she took pride in that her little store had pulled through despite the COVID-19 pandemic and its remote location.

Moreover, she is proud of fulfilling her aspiration of promoting local rural products to a wider audience and introducing the sweet items that have enamored her since she was a little girl to the region where she spent her childhood.

"We have customers, intrigued by millet-based creations, driving several hours from neighboring Hebei province and Tianjin, to eat our desserts," she said.

"We have also seen local villagers who treat their grandsons and granddaughters who return during holidays with a cup of coffee or a piece of cake from our store."

Jinpoluo village sits in Beijing's Miyun district and has around 3,000 residents. Nestled between rolling hills, the village has vast millet fields that turn a shade of gold in the autumn, hence the name Jinpoluo, meaning "golden wicker basket" in Chinese.

Liu was born in Neijiang, Sichuan province and moved to Beijing's Miyun district with her family at around 6 years old.

"When I was a kid, my mom often brought me to the city center and I was always drawn by hotel staff making desserts, staring at them through the floor-to-ceiling glass window. I still remember the scene where a baker sprinkled coconut flakes all over a cake," she said.

While relishing every dessert that she could get her hands on, making desserts by herself struck Liu as an intimidating task that only trained professionals were capable of.

She finished her bachelor's degree in teaching Chinese as a foreign language at a university in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, and went to the United States for further study.

"At that time, I saw my cousin baking a cake from a prepackaged powder mix and I thought to myself maybe I could bake as well," she said.

Liu dived into courses and workshops in the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and the famous Lenotre Culinary Arts School in Paris, France. She eventually decided to drop out of school to accumulate experience in running bakeries across China.

In late 2020, she returned to Miyun and began searching for a place to start her own shop.

"A friend of mine suggested I visit Jinpoluo for inspiration," she said. "I was first impressed by the quality of the cherries grown locally and the number of tourists flocking here during the summer to pick fruit," said Liu.

"Then I heard that the village also produces millet, pumpkins, chestnuts and walnuts, and it occurred to me that all of these ingredients can be used to make desserts."

Another attraction for Liu, she said, is that the village has a cooperative that pools resources from all farmers and villagers and is organic.

After deciding to settle in Jinpoluo, Liu experimented with her calling card item — millet cookies -for several months.

"Millet is a relatively healthy staple food, just like quinoa seeds, and is gaining popularity overseas," she said. "Unlike wheat that can be ground into very fine flour, millet flour is coarser and doughs made with it cannot be as stretchy and soft as those made with wheat flour."

Achieving a desirable texture and taste — slightly crumbly with a nutty flavor — could suffice for a baking hobbyist at home. However, Liu understood that opening a bakery requires standardized procedures and consistent output.

Liu worked with the rural cooperative and trained three female villagers on key baking skills, from making cookie batter to decorating cakes.

"Teaching them how to make desserts was actually quite convenient because they were willing to learn and meticulous in copying every single step that I demonstrated," she said.

Over time, the number of apprentices at the shop has grown to over a dozen, Liu said.

"Local villagers have also learned to adjust recipes based on the size of eggs and the condition of different batches of millet and flour," she added.

In November, a food reviewer and former pastry chef with nearly two million followers on Douyin, the Chinese version of the short video app TikTok, visited the store and spoke highly of its products.

He was effusive in his praise for one particular item — a fusion of the decadent, cream cheese-based Basque cake and locally produced pumpkin.

"The creamy cake and sweet pumpkin are a great match, which gives a sense of satisfaction and is not cloying at all," he said in a video that drew 80,000 likes. "I think this store not only excels in its business idea, but also in its presentation of the final dish."

The online influencer's patronage instantly brought a wave of customers to Liu's store and inevitably generated some scathing reviews from those who felt the taste did not live up to their expectations.

"We had been preparing and running the business for nearly three years and were suddenly thrust into the spotlight. I felt under great pressure and was anxious for a while," she said.

"But later I realized that taste is a subjective matter and all we can do is to make sure that we use high-quality materials and ensure that each batch meets our own standards."

Liu said she did not intend her place to be deemed among the legions of "internet celebrity stores"- businesses that take off suddenly due to online promotion but soon disappear as social media allure ebbs.

"The tag implies that the business will be short-lived and lack prospects in the long term," she said."But for us, I think the store has core competitive advantages — we have invented our own variety of items and we have local villagers as a steady source of employees."

Throughout a Friday morning — a relative downtime for the store -Liu could hardly take a break, busy checking expiration dates of a new batch of milk, examining the freshness of blueberries she ordered online and asking helpers to clean straw packaging and litter off the ground.

Around 10:30 am, the buttery, yeasty scent of freshly baked products permeated the shop. The first customer of the day stepped in, ordered a cup of coffee, a millet cookie and enjoyed them by the windowsill.

Outside her store, local villagers gathered to chat and play cards under the warm sunlight, while several parked their tricycles loaded with sweet potato vermicelli noodles, Chinese salty crepes and other homemade specialties, appealing to customers who visit the patisserie.

"This courtyard in front of my store has become the central business district of Jinpoluo," she said half-jokingly.

Liu recently leased a house about a five-minute walk away and was renovating it into a storage house and an activity place to hold workshops for school children as well as adults.

"I don't make long-term plans for my business and I want my pace to be steady," she said. "But if there is a market need, such as growing queries about learning baking skills, I will definitely grab the opportunity and make a move."