A sign hanging above the door of Shikorina Bakeshop & Cafe greets guests with the welcoming message: “You deserve a sweet little treat.”

If you heed its siren call and enter, you’ll find yourself ensconced in a cozy queer oasis with lofty ceilings and a soothing lavender interior. Lesbian and gay pride flags are proudly displayed front and center, and a pastry case beckons with enticing treats like homemade Pop-Tarts, cookies, banana bread, brownies, pie, and whimsically decorated cakes. You might hear Chappell Roan or SZA playing in the background.

Shikorina owner and pastry chef Hana Yohannes first fell in love with baking as a kid via the Betty Crocker mixes her Eritrean mom used to use, which were always crowd-pleasers. But it wasn’t until 2019, when Yohannes found the community bakeshop the Pastry Project, that she learned how to create a range of baked goods from scratch. “My mom’s an amazing cook, but in our country, we traditionally don’t have any desserts, so we were pretty limited in terms of our skills there,” she says. 

Yohannes was working in marketing for Seattle Children’s Hospital at the time, and the Pastry Project, which provides free baking and pastry training for individuals who would normally have barriers to employment in the industry, was searching for participants for the first cohort of its 12-week program. She signed up and soon became fascinated with the chemistry of baking, eagerly experimenting with different flavor profiles.

Just after she graduated, the pandemic hit. With nothing else to do, Yohannes used her newfound skills to bake cookies and cakes out of her apartment for friends and family, and word quickly spread. When she found a former home for rent in the Central District, she took a leap of faith and decided to open her own bakery. “There was just so much going on during the pandemic, it just felt like it was the right time to do something a little reckless and try something new,” she says. “I figured, any business owner can do everything right and you might still fail, you never know what’s going to happen. I kind of leaned on my community a lot and just went for it.” A successful GoFundMe campaign raised over $18,000, and thus Shikorina Pastries opened its doors in 2021. Appropriately, the word shikorina is a term of endearment meaning “sweetness” or “sweetheart” in Tigrinya.

The bakery moved to Capitol Hill and reopened as Shikorina Bakeshop & Cafe in 2024. Yohannes says the transition has been challenging due to the faster pace of the neighborhood and the fact that rent is three times higher than it was at the Central District location. She’s currently the only employee and works six days a week. “At our old location, I was very lucky to be able to just follow my passions and bake the things I wanted to bake and lead with my heart, and everything else would just fall into place,” Yohannes says. “But now I definitely have to be more business-minded to make things work.” This often means focusing on popular items like coffee and working on custom cake orders to bring in extra income.

Despite hardships, Yohannes is grateful. “I’m just so incredibly lucky to own my own business, that’s not lost on me,” she says. “It’s really a privilege, especially to see all the regulars that I’ve gained here and all the wonderful people who come here and support me, so it’s definitely well worth it.” Because the Pastry Project helped her get her start, Yohannes is committed to “sending the elevator back down” and hopes to pay it forward by employing and training new bakers in the future.

All of Shikorina’s ingredients are organic and/or locally sourced, as well as fair trade. Johannes employs organic fair-trade chocolate from the Bellingham bean-to-bar factory K’UL Chocolate, Washington-sourced flour from the Utah-based supplier Central Milling, berries from a farm in Yakima, and tea from Friday Afternoon in Wallingford.

True to her Betty Crocker mix roots, chocolate chunk cookies are still Yohannes’s favorite thing to make and eat. She has nostalgic memories of baking cookies with her siblings as a kid, and cookies were the first thing she learned how to make at the Pastry Project. “I’m just in love with them,” she says. “I feel like I’m constantly tweaking the recipe, because I always feel like baking is never perfect, and I’m always trying to make them better.” 

Pop-Tarts were another mainstay of Yohannes’s childhood, so she whips up her own gourmet versions based on another recipe she learned from the Pastry Project, with tender, flaky pastry and fillings like caramel apple, maple butter, and brown sugar cinnamon, plus a savory variation with beef and onions. Blueberry matcha and strawberry are especially popular.

One of Shikorina’s signature offerings, the berbere caramel cookie, came about when Yohannes wanted to pay homage to her Eritrean culture. Since Eritrean cuisine doesn’t traditionally include desserts, she tried baking with the savory spice blend berbere, which contains red pepper, ginger, garlic, and onion. The feisty mix makes for a slightly bitter, earthy flavor that’s the perfect foil for the fudgy ribbons of caramel encased in a chewy cookie.

Yohannes cultivates a sense of inclusivity at Shikorina by providing multiple menu items for those with allergies and dietary restrictions, including gluten-free, nut-free, and vegan options. Board games are available to provide entertainment. Eventually, she hopes to host community events, such as DJ nights, exhibitions from local artists, pop-ups from small local businesses, poetry nights, tea parties, and paint-and-sip classes.

Last year, Capitol Hill Block Party rented out the bakery to host performers, which resulted in the Midwest Princess herself, Chappell Roan, dropping by with her drag mother Sasha Colby. Unfortunately, Yohannes didn’t get to meet them, but as a fan, it was a surreal moment for her, and she heard that Roan loved the space. CHBP will use the shop again this year, so only time will tell which artists visit next.

The most fulfilling part of Yohannes’s journey has been building a relationship with her customers. She’s baked cakes for people’s birthdays multiple years in a row and gotten to witness kids grow up as she bakes cakes for their baby showers and first birthdays.

“Just getting to know people slowly, on a deeper level, every time I meet them, is so rewarding,” she says. “You start as strangers, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again…Then eventually I know what you were doing last weekend, and I get to check in on that. I know exactly what your order is. Building those friendships is really nice.”