While most know her as Yuki,
when she’s in the kitchen – it’s Barika!

“Barika” translates to “success” in Swahili & “Yuki” means “snow” in Japanese. In the spirit of both names, Yuki strives to live her life from a place of intentionality and love.  From a young age, she has always enjoyed spending time cooking and creating.  Yuki grew up watching both parents cook various cultural dishes and her late father always reminded her that, “the best cook is a clean cook!” It wasn’t until graduate school that she leaned into baking sweets as an outlet for self-care and healing.  Baking has always been a source of community and connection.  In her early baking days, she used baking as a way to fellowship with others and typically gave away most of her baked goods to friends and loved ones. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Yuki reconnected with her passion for baking as a newfound source for creativity.  What started as handing out free slices as a way to see her friends during quarantine, soon blossomed into a self-taught baking journey.  She likes to consider herself a proud graduate of Youtube University!  After many struggle cakes and pep-talks from her husband to overcome her own “baking impostor syndrome,” Yuki officially launched Barika Bakes at the start of 2021.  Baking continues to be a source of joy while she balances her day job as the Assistant Director of a multicultural counseling unit at UC Berkeley serving first-generation, low-income and historically underrepresented students. While San Diego is her hometown, she is grateful to have rooted her home in Oakland with her husband, highschool sweetheart & biggest supporter Anthony.