Utah dessert shop Chubby Baker plans to ‘explore,’ try new recipes with its flagship location now open

Ying Nance — who’s the owner of the Asian American dessert shop Chubby Baker and is originally from Thailand — said she had “higher expectations” when she first tasted American doughnuts.

“I think I can do better,” Nance said she told her mother-in-law at the time, without knowing how to fry doughnuts or bake.

Nance and her mother-in-law did a lot of experimentation in the kitchen, and the result was Nance’s signature doughnuts: pillowy soft, dusted in granulated sugar but not too sweet, and often featuring Asian-inspired flavors that might be new to American palates.

And Chubby Baker — which features multiple desserts on its menu, not only doughnuts — has grown to include three Utah locations: 317 E. 900 South, Salt Lake City, next door to Loki Coffee; 1167 S. State St., Orem; and the newest one at 9470 S. Highland Drive, Suite 2, Sandy.

With the Sandy location now open as Chubby Baker’s flagship store and main kitchen, Nance said she’s ready to add more items to her repertoire, including new products for the holiday season.

Testing doughnuts during quarantine

Like many home business ventures, were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic, Chubby Baker might not have happened.

Before COVID, Nance and her boyfriend at the time had made plans for her to move from Thailand to the United States in 2022, after they got married.

But when she was visiting the United States at the beginning of 2020 and COVID hit, she wasn’t able to go home to Thailand, Nance said. So she extended her visa, she said, ended up marrying her boyfriend early, and stayed.

What started as a two-month trip to the United States ended up being three years, she said, partly because she had a baby in the meantime.

In 2021, Nance applied to get her green card, a process that would take about a year, she said. During that time, she wanted to work, but she couldn’t get a typical job because she was still waiting to receive her green card, she said.

Instead, Nance got the idea to make something in her mother-in-law’s kitchen and sell it, and took to YouTube in order to learn the skills she needed to make doughnuts and bake desserts. She would find recipes online and test them, tweaking them to suit her tastes.

During one COVID scare in August 2020, while under a two-week quarantine, Nance and her mother-in-law tested doughnuts every day, Nance said.

As she was doing all that testing, Nance thought, “What can I do to make doughnuts different than other doughnuts in America?” That’s when she was inspired to make her coconut cream doughnut, a delicately flavored confection made with fresh young coconut from Thailand.

That doughnut flavor would become the first she ever sold, Nance said.

Nance got the word out about Chubby Baker by dropping off doughnuts at the homes of foodies and influencers, she said. Once they started posting about her doughnuts on social media, Nance said, she began to get customers.

By September 2020, she was filling online orders, transporting a carful of doughnuts around the Salt Lake Valley — even though she was new to the area and to driving.

In January 2021, Nance saw a “for lease” sign in front of the Salt Lake City building that would later become her first brick-and-mortar shop. She signed a lease in February, did a build-out, and opened that October. The Orem location opened in 2023, and the Sandy location opened in June.

Nance said she had never thought about becoming a baker or opening a dessert shop. In fact, before she married her husband, she said she told him, “Don’t expect me to cook.”

New desserts to come

Nance said her doughnuts are elevated compared to typical doughnuts, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients and making everything by hand, including all of the decorations, glazes and fillings.

The five core flavors that have been around since the beginning include: coconut cream, ube (a sweet purple yam from the Philippines that some say tastes like white chocolate, vanilla and pistachio), passion fruit cream cheese, “hot” guava (seasoned with Thai chili powder and Tajin), and Ferrero Rocher. Unfilled “ring” doughnuts came later, with flavors including brown butter and blueberry lavender.

In 2022, Nance added the strawberry and cream doughnut, which is filled with fresh strawberry slices and beautiful Chantilly cream. Now, it’s one of her most popular.

Since the beginning, Nance has also baked cakes. The first four flavors were gooey chocolate, ube, banana pudding bomb, and strawberry and cream. Later came the Chubby Tiger cake — a chocolate cake layered with Biscoff sauce, banana, cream and Biscoff crumbs.

Returning this year are the “croffle,” or croissant waffles, and they come in flavors including strawberry and cream, Biscoff, Nutella banana, ham and cheese, and plain.

Something special — available only at the Sandy location — is bingsu ice, which is a bowl of finely shaved ice (it’s more like fresh snow) and pieces of cake topped with whipped cream, strawberry sauce and chopped strawberries.

To go with dessert is an array of specialty beverages, including coffee drinks, matcha lattes, fizzy fruit drinks, Korean strawberry milk, seasonal drinks and more.

Nance is always featuring new and seasonal flavors, and she finds inspiration for her desserts by following foodies on Instagram and by soaking in the food scene of her home city, Bangkok, where she said you can find any cuisine imaginable until about 4 a.m.

For example, Nance said the inspiration for her hot guava doughnut came from the fruit stalls of Bangkok, where vendors will dip pieces of guava into sweet chili pepper and salt.

“That’s how I create the coating for the doughnut and then put the guava inside to kind of copy the taste of the fruit stall,” Nance said.

Chubby Baker has several new flavors of desserts coming out for the holiday season, including a sticky date pudding doughnut topped with caramel sauce and pecans that Nance calls “one of my favorite doughnuts that I’ve ever made.”

“I’ve been thinking of this for a couple years now, and I was thinking, ‘How can I turn this into a doughnut?’” she said. “And we’ve tried a couple times, and I think we really nailed it.”

More festive treats will include a gooey chocolate cake with marmalade in the middle, an eggnog latte, and an eggnog doughnut with a creme brulee crust on top.

Come December, Nance said they’re going to start trying out some brand new products, including cake doughnuts and apple fritters.

“Now that we are moved into this kitchen, we are ready to explore more,” she said.

— Follow Chubby Baker on Instagram at @chubbybakerusa.