Fortnite audio, frosting frogs and a Northeastern student making a birthday cake — somehow, these elements created Morgan Knight’s first viral video on TikTok, garnering around 749,500 views. 

Morgan Knight, a fourth-year political science major, is the creator of Saint Street Cakes, a Boston-based baking business that recently gained quite a bit of online attention. Knight’s clientele grew from friends of friends to people who have seen her online content, stemming from her first viral video. 

“My love language [is] sharing food with people. I took my first and only cake decorating class when I was 10,” Knight said, “and from then on I’ve just loved baking.” 

Saint Street Cakes began when Knight posted a picture on Instagram of a cake she made. Juliet O’Hare, a fourth-year combined business administration and political science major and Knight’s roommate, said that the cake was made for her birthday. 

“I turned 21 in January when everything was still kind of locked down. [Knight] made me this beautiful strawberry and cream cake with a little 21 and little strawberries on it,” O’Hare said. “She posted on her Instagram and all these people contacted her and said, ‘Can you make me a cake? I’ll pay you.’”  

As far as the name, Knight drew inspiration from bakeries like Milk Bar and Magnolia Bakery that have an aspect of their names that is slightly playful. 

“I live on a street that has the word Saint in it. And because it’s a bakery based out of my home, I [thought] it could be kind of cool to have it be Saint Street, and then [I] just ended up loving how that sounded.”

Casey Waskiewicz, a fifth-year combined international affairs and political science major, said that before she was a customer of Saint Street Cakes she could easily identify Knight in their shared Zoom class. 

“When we would be on Zoom, I remember sometimes I would see her coming in and out of the frame with cakes,” Waskiewicz said. 

Knight didn’t just have one TikTok that received quite a few views. Her following is currently sitting at around 31,000 people. Knight’s most popular video has been seen by around 2.4 million people. 

“My first TikTok that went viral was a vegan frog cake I did for a close friend of mine, Natasha, for her birthday. It was the fifth Saint Street cake,” Knight said. “Then suddenly with TikTok, almost all my customers were people that I didn’t know.” 

One of Knight’s most popular cakes is based on singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. Knight says that this “Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher cake,” as she called it on her Instagram, is one of her most meaningful projects.

“[The cake] was for when Phoebe came on Zoom to perform at Northeastern. I wanted to mix the ghost from ‘Strangers in the Alps’ with the ‘Punisher’ cover because I thought that the ghost is still a really big motif in the second album, so I really liked being able to kind of mess around with that,” she said. 

Knight’s TikTok detailing the process of making the Phoebe Bridgers cake currently has 214,000 views. She said she’s remade this same cake four or five times since then. 

Through her viral TikToks and Instagram page, Knight accumulated a reputation for baking on campus. O’Hare said she’s witnessed Knight’s recognition grow. 

”She’s kind of become known as the girl that bakes cakes. Now that things are opening back up and I’m running into people, they’re always asking ‘How’s Morgan and her cake?’” O’Hare said.

As far as the future of Saint Street Cakes, Knight has big plans that may not involve baking as her full-time gig. Knight said she sees herself pursuing a career in policy or legal advocacy. However, that doesn’t mean she’s going to stop making cakes anytime soon. 

“I think that having cakes as a side hustle/passion project is really fun. [A] big dream for Saint Street Cakes is [to make it] a brick and mortar store,” she said. “’I’d like to one day kind of ‘Ina Garten’ it — work in policy for a long time and then make a bakery.”