More than a decade ago, Karly Giang wanted to bake a cake for her young niece’s birthday. The only hiccup? Giang had never baked a cake before. She did some research, took to the kitchen, and came out with a two-tier Dora the Explorer-themed fondant cake that delighted her niece.
“I like a good challenge and doing things out of my comfort zone,” said Giang, a native of Alabama who now lives in Suwanee. “Her expression and excitement gave me validation and made me think, ‘Maybe this is something I’d like to keep doing.’ And I never stopped doing it.”
In 2016, she launched Sweets by Karly, taking custom orders for cakes and cupcakes. She began baking in earnest after a trip to San Francisco that introduced her to the macaron.
“It was the best thing I’d ever eaten,” she said of the French confection. “I was obsessed with it, and there was nothing like it in Atlanta at the time. I decided I was going to figure out how to make them, but they really gave me a run for my money. But once I got it, I was like, ‘This is my niche. This is exactly what I was looking for.’”
In 2017, she launched pop-up Milla’s Macarons (instagram.com/millasmacarons), named for her now-12-year-old daughter. She has since popped up at events like the Atlanta Dessert Festival and local businesses including Tan-Cha in Doraville and Nom Station in Marietta.
Credit: Courtesy of Milla's Macarons
Credit: Courtesy of Milla's Macarons
“There are only four ingredients, so I thought, ‘How hard could it be?,’” she said. “I dived in with no clue. It’s not just about the ingredients, it’s about the technique. They’re so finicky, and depend on the humidity, temperature and the type of oven. If you overmix by one fold, you might as well throw away the whole batch. It takes a lot of patience.”
She has developed a following for her macaron ice cream sandwiches, as well as dacquoise, a French dessert cake filled with meringue; bombolini, an Italian doughnut filled with cream; and Vietnamese flan cake.
Many of her flavors draw on her heritage. Her parents both grew up in Cambodia. Her father is Chinese, and her mother is Vietnamese and ran a catering business that specialized in Vietnamese pastries.
Giang’s signature sandwiches include ube ice cream with an ube shell; Vietnamese coffee-flavored macaron and ice cream made with condensed milk; and brown sugar boba, with brown sugar ice cream and homemade boba pearls.
In addition to her day job as a web developer and her baking, Giang also runs the food Instagram account Karly Eats (instagram.com/karlyeats) and the ATL Asian Eats Facebook page to support Asian-owned businesses in metro Atlanta that has grown to nearly 40,000 followers. She’s content to operate Milla’s Macarons as a pop-up, though she said she’d be open to a brick-and-mortar if the right opportunity comes along. And she continues to draw inspiration from the pop-up’s namesake.
“My daughter is the heart and soul of the business,” she said. “She’s my inspiration and quality assurance. Her palate is so pure, and it’s amazing what she can pick up on that I don’t.”
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