Emily’s Matcha Vanilla Strawberry Birthday Cake

The Flop of Love

A birthday cake I made for a friend turned into a near disaster. During my fourth year of undergrad, my time was stretched thin between a part-time job at a pizza joint, being a full-time student, and working on the early stages of my business plan for Iski Bakery.

emmy and i at a halloween party together :)

Let me preface this by saying: time management has never been my strong suit. Two weeks before everything came crashing down, I offered to bake my good friend Emily a birthday cake. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what to get her, and being someone who opts for homemade gifts 90% of the time, I figured a cake could be my ticket out of the gift-shopping panic.

emmy and I at a psu game our junior year

Two weeks later, I realized I had scheduled this homemade cake during one of my busiest weeks — projects, papers, a midterm, and thirty hours of flipping pizza dough. By the time Emily’s birthday rolled around, the cake felt like one more exam I hadn’t studied for.

Nevertheless, I studied in between baking and grocery runs, thinking I was being smart by baking the cake the night before. My plan was simple but (supposedly) effective: bake the cake, wrap it in plastic wrap, make the frosting, and assemble everything after work at 10 p.m.

whiteout game junior year of college together

Only that night, I didn’t clock out until 10:20 — and still had a 13-minute walk home, which I somehow managed in nine minutes, sprinting while holding a pizza box in my hands.

When deciding on the flavor, I remembered how Emily and I would grab matcha lattes between classes at school. We’d bump into each other around noon, chat briefly, and those small moments led to me inviting her to a Christmas party with my roommates. So for her birthday, I decided on a vanilla cake layered with matcha buttercream.

Ambitiously, I thought I could make her a capybara cake out of buttercream. It ended up looking more like… well, you can glance at the picture and interpret it yourself.

it was meant to be a capybara bc she loved them but it turned out like that...

Wanting to fill the center with strawberries, I cut a circular hole into the middle — not realizing the cake wasn’t sturdy enough to handle it. The result? Vanilla cake is crumbling in my hands. The layers were uneven, and the middle sank under the weight of my enthusiasm. Frosting slid off one side in slow motion, like a comedy skit. I sighed, gave up on the layer, and ran to the store in the rain for more ingredients.

I baked it again, frosted it, and called my best friend Sarah to help with the finishing touches. We arrived late to the party, but we delivered the cake. The sweet aroma of vanilla and earthy matcha filled the car — and probably the hallway too.

her 22nd birthday night :)

Emily looked at the cake and asked, “What is that supposed to be?” with a playful grin. It wasn’t the cutest, but each bite was tender despite its appearance. Her eyes lit up, maybe because I managed to save the cake after all. Thankfully, everyone enjoyed it, and it was well-received.

Something I learned two years later, during last-minute frostings and cake bakings for my pop-up bakeries, was that God always prepares us. When it came to selling actual cakes —not a free one for a friend's birthday —I was ready to frost efficiently, even with last-minute baking.

Lesson learned: don’t use cold buttercream to crumb coat.

Love,

-Iski Bakery