Issue 04: Interview with Oracle Bakery
Scrolling through your social media in the past year, you’ve no doubt stumbled across your fair share of frog-inspired creations. From Youtube creators like Melanie Locke to big-name brands like Duncan Hines, it seems like everyone is trying to re-create Oracle Bakery’s endearing butter-cream designs. The Audacity sat down with Claire Ma, the mastermind behind Oracle Bakery and its trending treats, to discuss cake art, social media, the pressure of the spotlight, future plans, and more.
Tell me a bit about yourself.
So I’m Claire. Claire Ma. I’m 23, currently living in Chicago, which is where I was born and raised. I’m staying with my parents because of the pandemic. Prior to this I was an MFA Film student at UCLA, so I was living out in California. My life path was not really related to cakes at all. I was living by myself out in L.A. and I figured it would suck to be living at home for such a long time without anyone, so I moved back here. I started baking around June as a pandemic hobby, as everyone did. I used it to relieve boredom and have a creative outlet while I’m stuck at home doing nothing — and it really just took off from there. At first I was only doing it for myself and for friends, just as a little gift, but as time went on and my social media presence grew larger I started getting inquiries from other people, and that’s how the business began!
Is Oracle Bakery your job or a hobby? Would you like to continue in this as a career?
Oracle Bakery is my full-time gig right now, because I took this year off from school for various reasons, mostly the fact that we can’t shoot anything due to the pandemic, so it’s like why would I continue to be enrolled? Film wasn’t really related to art, I was never doing art as my main concentration, but I’ve been able to do it full time — working on cakes and social media. I think it's such a crazy thing being able to sustain myself financially and creatively — building something that’s entirely me creatively and entirely my vision; it’s definitely something I’d like to take further along.
Is all your cake making done out of your home? Do you wish someday to make your own bake shop?
All of this is done from my home. It’s a complicated thing. Due to food laws, what I’m currently doing isn’t really a sustainable model as far as a bakery goes, but I’m not sure if in the future I’d like to open like a commercial bakery because I think a lot of what I like about the creative process is working on an individual piece for a long period of time and being able to concentrate on one cake, and really pour detail and effort and attention into it, and that might not be so compatible with a standard bakery where you're putting out 10 cakes a day, for example. I really want to approach cakes from a more artistic model, where I think of each cake as more of a piece of art than a cake.
How did the frog cake trend come to be?
I didn’t intend for it to be viral, obviously. Initially, I had started making frogs just for the sake of them being so simple. Anatomically they’re not very complicated to make. The first frog cake I posted just because I was like wow it’s cute. So I never really intended for it to be trendy or whatever, but I think for some reason people really resonated with them, partially because frogs are kind of a big thing right now with the cottagecore aesthetic. It just picked up from there and people have been running with it. It was definitely sub 5k when I posted my first frog cake. I definitely have frogs to thank for a lot of my current following!
Are you happy with the virality?
Oh, ya, absolutely! It’s crazy that people resonate with the designs and enjoy it so much. I love it when people send me their interpretations; it’s just so crazy to see people spending their time on it, so in that way I’m super happy it went viral. Although, I guess my one caveat is sort of feeling pigeon-holed by its success. You know I’m very cognisant, self aware, when I’m posting a cake with a frog on it because I’m like, wow, am I milking the trend that I created? And I don’t want it to seem like I’m leaning too far into frogs because then I feel like I’m walking that line of becoming “the girl who only makes frog cakes”. Trends come and go and I don’t to seem like I’m hanging onto a dying trend. But then, I never made frog cakes to become a trend to begin with, so I’m like why am I super caught up in this? It’s just this whole crazy cycle of being too self conscious about it being a thing and then not wanting it to be a thing.
You’re now known for these bright character cakes, is there a pressure to keep these as your aesthetic?
Absolutely. The good thing is I’m not sick of them yet and I still enjoy the aesthetic so I’ll keep making them. But certain things fall into it, like the frogs, for example,. Now that they’ve entered the mainstream I’m sort of moving away from them. And I guess I’ve made a few cakes recently that may not fall into my current aesthetic of 3D characters made of butter cream. And so I’m a little more hesitant to put those out just because they do diverge so much from my established look that I’m not really sure what the reception would be.
You recently joined TikTok and Youtube. Is there a reason you weren’t on these platforms before?
Honestly, it’s simply because I'm slightly too old to be in the middle of that TikTok demographic. I don’t think any of my friends are on it, so I really didn’t have an incentive to be on it. I never occurred to me that I should join. But then the frog cake thing started happening and people were like, dude your cakes are blowing up all over TikTok. I was like, I don’t know how to use it, but okay! So, ya, I didn’t really feel the need to be on that platform. I think it’s cool that people were doing their own interpretations on TikTok but it was quite far from me. The reason I recently joined is just because I’ve been trying to diversify the types of media that I’m doing. I want to do more video stuff, especially. I’ve been really slow on that because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I was really trying to utilize my film experience. Since I have these videos lying around, I’m going to post them to video-based platforms, hence why I joined. I don’t really want to do the run of the mill “this is how you make a frog cake.” That doesn’t appeal to me aesthetically. I guess the standard recipe for a video wouldn’t work quite as well for my cakes. I’m more interested in doing almost an asmr or stuff that you can put on in the background and it looks good. Eye candy. I finished cutting my first video recently, I did a short edit for TikTok and then a long edit with more concrete steps for Youtube. It was kind of a big launch.
What are your future cake-making goals?
I’d love for it to be more sustainable as a full-time gig. Obviously, it doesn’t pay very well to make cakes the way that I’m doing it since I spend a lot of time on each cake. I’m trying to figure out how to support myself as an artist through cake art. In the future, I’d love to see this become a more sustainable choice for me. I don’t have any super-crazy goals like opening a bakery. I really just want to do more exploration in terms of mediums and materials, like experimenting with sugar and meringue and all sorts of things. So I look forward to more artistic exploration!Throughout 2021, expect more videos. Making the first one was a blast so I’m excited for more. And then hopefully some merch will go up soon. I’m communicating with some artists about custom stickers and stationery — that would be fun.
