'Couldn't believe my company is baking for an international star': Local cafe owner shares how she catered for IU and her crew

South Korean singer-actress IU was in town recently for her H.E.R. World Tour concerts on April 20 to 21, and this local baker had the chance to prepare spreads of goodies for her.

In a series of TikTok videos, Chanel Li, former air stewardess and owner of Cafe Lilac, shared her experience baking for the 30-year-old K-pop star and her team.

According to Chanel, this was her cafe's first time preparing a concert dessert table.

Sharing a clip of herself and her team setting up the table and decorations—which included a banner, posters and name tags for the desserts—she added that they designed everything with IU in mind.

"I couldn't believe my company is baking for an international star," she said.

Starting from Day 0 (the day of the rehearsal) to Day 3 (second day of the concert) Chanel and her team prepared spreads of desserts ranging from cakes to choux puffs and drinks.

The first day featured desserts with Singaporean flavours - a pandan coconut chiffon cake with 'Welcome to SG' written on it in red cream, square-cut pulut hitam (black glutinous rice) cakes and black-sesame white-chocolate tarts.

There were also taro-flavoured goodies—a popular favourite among Cafe Lilac patrons—like taro choux puffs and taro latte.

"We heard that the crew enjoyed our bakes so much, and our choux puffs were also featured in IU's VCR," said Chanel in the video's caption, adding that she and her team had planned different themes for each day's bakes.

For Day 1, the desserts were inspired by IU's songs, and Chanel shared in the video that her team researched on the singer's top hits and her concert setlist while planning the menu.

This time round, there was a heart-shaped cake with 'Love Wins All' written on it, mini taromisu cakes (inspired by Lilac), blue raspberry macarons (Blueming), passionfruit white chocolate tarts (Bbibbi) and strawberry cupcakes (Strawberry Moon).

For the final day, Chanel and her team baked Korean-themed sweet treats - injeolmi and dalgona coffee cakes, yuzu meringue and sweet potato tarts and banana milk cake with 'Swee lah!' written in purple, something IU said at the first day of her Singapore concert.

Chanel shared that all the cakes were wiped out when she headed back to restock the treats: "I think they really loved the Korean flavours."

For Uaenas (IU fans) who are experiencing post-concert withdrawals, Cafe Lilac will be playing IU songs and giving out free drinks to those who attended the concerts this Saturday (April 27).

By showing your ticket, each patron is entitled to one free drink choice of hot/iced americano, latte or sparkling yuzu.

Additionally if you can name three IU songs, you get 10 per cent off your order.

syarifahsn@asiaone.com