Joanna Ma: The Engineer & The Cake Queen

My earliest memory of baking was back in elementary school when I would spend school breaks baking Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies with my cousin Fiona (an another amazing baker!) in New Jersey.  We’d make cookies in all different shapes and sizes – tiny cookies, pan-sized cookies, heart-shaped cookies….that was the extent of my baking then.  The only other time I’d have a chance to bake was for school bake sales, when I’d make cupcakes out of the boxed mixes, most of the Funfetti variety.  I don’t really remember other times I would bake, other than the fact that I really loved watching cake decorating shows growing up: Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss, Cake Wars…practically any show with the word “cake” in it.  I could watch these shows for hours and never get sick of them.  I was amazed at what can be created from items that are all edible, and in just a short amount of time!  Every time I’d watch these shows, I’d say to myself, “I’m going to open up a bakery and make these awesome cakes one day”.

At the end of my freshman year of college, I discovered that my local arts and crafts store offered Wilton cake decorating classes and I signed up immediately.  It’s a 4-part course that teaches everything from piping techniques with buttercream and creating royal icing flowers, to creating tiered and 3D-sculpted cakes with fondant and gum paste.  All participants who finish the course are qualified to teach a cake decorating course of their own.  After I finished these classes, I taught my own cake decorating for two summers in Chinatown for kids ages 7-13 and made a bunch of custom cakes for my friends and family.  Quickly realizing the number of hours that I’d put into making these cakes, I thought to myself, “Why make these cakes for free when I can try selling them?”  With some encouragement from my friends and family, I started my business at the end of 2013 and called it It’s Jo Cake!

It was rather difficult to build my client base for the first two years.  Still relatively new in the Bay Area, I didn’t have many connections.  Then, in 2015, I joined a coworking space in Oakland, California.  Having a supportive community makes a huge difference!  It’s Jo Cake is completely a side gig for me, but I had such supportive friends and family who all believe in me and helped make this happen.  I’d bring in cupcakes to the coworking space every now and then and people eventually started to call me “The Cupcake Queen”.  However, I didn’t want to make just cupcakes, I wanted to make custom 3D sculpted cakes, but I just didn’t have the right clientele for it.  It wasn’t until the Fall of 2016, I got my very first custom order: a burrito cake.  Since that burrito cake, the opportunities just started rolling in. I collaborated with a fellow tea maker to host our very own “Tea and Cupcakes Happy Hour” every first Friday of the month.  I’d make cupcakes that would complement her delicious herbal teas.  I started to get more orders for custom cakes, instead of cupcakes, and I catered my very first wedding.

2017 has been such a great year for It’s Jo Cake!  I’ve doubled in income and orders since last year, and having such a supportive community has made all the difference…so much that I was nominated as an Innovative Newcomer for the Oakland Indie Awards!  I was amongst 29 other local businesses.  It was an extremely humbling experience to have It’s Jo Cake! recognized as an actual business in the Oakland area.  This year has really allowed me to challenge myself and improve my cake decorating skills.  I made cupcake bouquets for Valentine’s Day, made my first tiered wedding cake, and entered my very first cake competition.  Now that I have a full-time job, it’s been quite difficult to juggle both a job and a side hustle so I haven’t been very proactive about taking orders.  However, when I do take an order, it’s a great challenge for time management.  I used to bake and decorate through the night, but it’s much harder to do that now with a full-time job.

I love cake decorating because it combines engineering and design and really challenges me to think outside-of-the-box.  I’ll take a look at an ordinary object and wonder, “How do I turn this into a cake?”  A lot of times a customer would present an idea and give me complete creative freedom.  Working on my cake business while job hunting has also helped me out tremendously during my job interviews. It gave me the confidence that I needed in my interviews. Putting my position on my Linkedin profile got interviewers excited about cake and made for a nice icebreaker during my interviews.  I’m excited for what’s to come for It’s Jo Cake!   If any of you want to get into cake decorating, go for it!   It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience, but it’s all worth it in the end when you see the reaction on people’s faces when they see your cakes.