Zhou Fei makes an art piece with fondant at his studio in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Zhou says he also learned something from the detectives' ability to spot the fondant morsels from real dishes. He realized that he had made them look too fresh and appetizing because he didn't consider that real food would lose some freshness over the course of a long period of filming.

"I could have done better," he says.

In 2014, Zhou graduated from a vocational school in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, majoring in Western desserts and buttercream cakes, to become a pastry chef.

He found that fondant cakes have more room for creative customization for clients, so he started to learn fondant modeling by himself. "A fondant cake with exquisite details can impress the clients as if silently telling a story," he says.

Moreover, Zhou wanted "to use this Western skill to present traditional Chinese culture" and he has actually made a name out of it.

After years of effort, and armed with his wild imagination, he has become well-known in the field for creating fondant figures from Chinese myth.

His signature work is the "magic forest", which won him a top prize at the International Cake Show Australia in 2018.

That piece took him three months to prepare and really shows his imagination. In the "magic forest" there were fairies and a winged lion. The lifelike fondant, with every detail made with care, impressed the judges.