Chef Julie Yee was born into a Peranakan family and she spent much of her childhood helping her grandmother make Peranakan pastries for sale and cooking for the extended family on weekends. Her passion for Peranakan cooking stems from this early introduction to the cuisine and she enjoys experimenting to find more efficient ways to prepare traditional dishes. After graduating from the National Institute of Education (NIE) as a Home Economics teacher, Chef Julie went on to take a diploma in baking and continually works on improving her skills by taking up professional courses such as Advanced Bread Making, Petits Fours and Cake Decoration and Modern French Pastries. Chef Julie has been running Julie's Baking Lab for more than a decade and she contributes recipes regularly to Lianhe Zaobao.