One bursts with pink, blue, green, and yellow. Another seems to have sprouted an imaginary garden. A third feels as though it belongs in a dream. They are whimsical, joyful, slightly wild, and impossible to ignore. At first glance, they hardly look like cakes.
The work of Kat Ong stopped me in my tracks.
The joy I get from her creations is the same joy I experience when standing before a painting that speaks to me.
For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, I found myself thinking of Alice in Wonderland. Not the story, but the feeling. The wonder. And perhaps that is the best way to begin understanding Ong.
Because before the cakes, there was a little girl who loved two things: food and art. Her summers as a child were spent taking cooking classes with Vicky Veloso-Barrera and painting with artist Ricky Osorio. Looking back, it seems almost inevitable that those two worlds would eventually meet.
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But not before life took her elsewhere.
She studied culinary arts at Enderun Colleges and at the Academy of Pastry and Culinary Art Philippines. She trained in the kitchens of The Ritz-Carlton and Amber in Hong Kong. She worked in hospitality, helped open a hotel in Boracay, and later launched Tuesday Bake during the pandemic.
When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill, Ong turned to baking.
Tuesday Bake began with milk buns, focaccia, cookies, carrot cake, granola, and eventually bakery-style muffins. Running a one-woman operation taught her discipline, consistency, and the quiet realities of building a business from the ground up.
Yet when she tells her story, she rarely begins there. Instead, she remembers painting.
“When I was younger, we painted landscapes,” she recalls. “I remember getting frustrated whenever I made lagpas. The body of water would just keep getting bigger and bigger.”
Many of us know that feeling. The desire to get things right. The gigil to color within the lines. The need to avoid mistakes.
For Ong, it must have been magnified. She describes herself as having been a high achiever for much of her life. Excellence came naturally to her.
So did striving.
Then came a quieter season.
In 2024, she found herself stepping back and reexamining many things—success, faith, and what it meant to create.
“I gained a deeper appreciation of God’s love for me,” she says. “How I was loved by God even before I achieved a thing.”
“I was learning how to create from love instead of for love.”
Something shifted. Simple as it sounds, it changed everything. She found herself returning to painting. Large canvas rolls covered the floor. Paint was layered, scratched, smeared, and explored.
There were no clients waiting. No deadlines. No expectations. She was simply free to be. Free to paint. Free to play.
“The more confident I am in the character of God, the more childlike I can be,” she says.
Looking at her work, it is hard not to believe her. Her work is childlike and full of surprises. Looking at her paintings beside her cakes, the connection becomes unmistakable.
The colors, textures, movement, the sense of play—the little girl who once covered canvases with paint lives on. She never disappeared. She simply found a new canvas.
Today, Ong describes herself not as a cake artist but as a creative who uses cake as her medium.
That creative approach extends beyond decoration.
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It took months of testing before she was satisfied with her cake and buttercream recipes. For Ong, the cake itself was just as important as the artwork surrounding it.
She eventually settled on only a handful of flavors; not because she lacked ideas but because she preferred depth over variety. Like her art, each one was developed with care, patience, and intention.
Each commission begins with a small anchor: a flower, a favorite color, a memory, a personality, or a meaningful detail from a client’s life.
A gardenia becomes layers of hand-painted petals in shades of blue and indigo. A tennis enthusiast’s story becomes movement, texture, and color. A first birthday cake becomes a joyful explosion of imagination.
Ong also rarely sketches. She prefers to begin with an idea and see where it takes her. No two cakes are alike. Nor are they meant to be. Because for her, the joy lies in the discovery.
One client told Ong that her cakes reminded her of Quentin Blake’s whimsical illustrations for Roald Dahl books.
Later, she wrote to say that the cake had moved her to tears. It was the first cake she had ever ordered for herself as an adult.
Ong never forgot that.
I suspect that is why Ong’s work resonates with so many people. Her cakes are beautiful, certainly. But what people respond to is something deeper. A sense of glee, joy, wonder… the feeling that life can still surprise us.
The artist who once worried about making lagpas now creates her most beautiful work beyond the lines.
What makes her work truly captivating is what lies beneath all the color, texture, and whimsy. It is the freedom to create, not to prove herself but out of love. For joy. And from simply knowing that she is loved by God.
From that place, everything flows… naturally.
Follow @tuesdaybake on Instagram for commissions
Oatmeal cookies
This was one of the first recipes Ong was taught in pastry school as part of the fundamentals. Simple, comforting, and dependable, it remains a favorite for its versatility. Enjoy it as is, or use it as a canvas for your own creativity. Add chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, spices, or whatever inspires you.
Ingredients:
- 1 25g butter
- 125g sugar
- 125g brown sugar
- 2g salt
- 63g eggs
- 5g vanilla essence
- 20g milk
- 188g all-purpose flour
- 7g baking powder
- 2g baking soda
- 150g rolled oats
- Optional: 125g chocolates, nuts, or raisins
Procedure:
- In a mixing bowl with a paddle, cream softened butter with white sugar, brown sugar, and salt
- Add milk, vanilla, and egg
- Add sifted all-purpose-flour, baking powder, and baking soda
- Add oats. Optional: Add chocolates, nuts, or raisins
- Chill dough for 12 hours
- Shape dough into a 40g ball and slightly flatten
- Bake in a convection oven at 190°C for 9 minutes
