Sweet success
During her senior year at Boston College, math and music major Ilona Znakharchuk ’21 enrolled in Euclid’s Elements, an advanced-level seminar examining the ancient Greek mathematics textbook considered by many to be a masterpiece of early logic. The course turned out to be one of her favorites, and several years later, it came in handy in a way she never expected.
Znakharchuk, co-founder of the recently-opened Solodko Bakery in Brighton, was working on a custom wedding cake order for a close friend, and struggling with how to balance the five tiers of heavy sponge.
“He was a construction guy and he wanted his cake to be off-center, like a staircase,” she recalled. “I’m sitting there late at night having a dilemma over how to keep everything together, and all of a sudden Euclid’s Elements just pops into my head. I remembered a specific theorem on how to find exact centers of circles and it helped me put the cake together.”
Math has run in Znakharchuk’s blood for generations: Her great-uncle, Mikhail Kravchuk, was a famous Ukrainian mathematician who invented the Kravchuk Polynomials, and both of her siblings studied the subject in college. Entering BC, Znakharchuk expected to pursue a finance career after graduation, but a trip to visit relatives in Ukraine shortly before her sophomore year brought a new passion to the surface: baking.
“I was totally blown away by the pastry scene in Europe,” she said. “One thing that really struck me was that the pastries were aesthetically pleasing but also delicious, which isn’t always the case in the U.S.”
One of Znakharchuk's signature wedding cakes. (Photo courtesy of Solodko)
Znakharchuk returned to the Heights armed with her family friend’s macaron recipe, and a new goal: to make desserts that tasted as amazing as they looked. She began spending weekends in her family’s kitchen in Western Massachusetts, baking macarons in different flavor combinations and gifting them to her roommates. When one of them insisted on creating an Instagram account for her baked goods, Znakharchuk suddenly found herself running a business.
“It’s such a tight-knit community and word spreads fast,” she said. “Before I knew it, students and professors were ordering macarons from me and I didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into. I didn’t even have packaging.”
With her mother’s help, Znakharchuk started churning out 150 macarons every Saturday, which she divided into boxes of four or six and delivered to dorm rooms and offices around campus. Eventually, at the advice of a friend, she visited BC’s Shea Center for Entrepreneurship to explore turning her side hustle into a career. By senior year, she had registered an LLC for her bakery, which she called Solodko, the Ukrainian word for “sweet.”
As a small business owner, Znakharchuk’s biggest hurdle was the fact that there were only 24 hours in a day. Newly graduated, she accepted a job at a wealth management company, but continued baking at night with her sister Irina, creating striking custom cakes out of a rented kitchen space. The juggle quickly led to burnout for both of them, and after months of soul-searching (and a few auspicious dreams) Znakharchuk quit her day job and began searching for a brick-and-mortar home for Solodko, eventually landing on a former pizza shop in Brighton, just a five-minute drive from the BC campus.
“I knew I needed to be near BC,” she explained. “It’s my comfort space, it’s where I go to walk around when I’m stressed, and it’s where the story started.”
Ilona and her sister Irina with their newest team member, Liliya. (Lee Pellegrini)
Last November, after a flurry of renovations, Solodko Boston opened to the public with a menu full of unexpected flavor combinations—Znakharchuk’s trademark—including pear, walnut, and blue cheese macarons, raspberry pistachio croissants, and white chocolate cranberry babka. Members of the community lined up to show their support, ordering tarts, eclairs, and slices of honey cake—a Ukrainian delicacy featuring eight thin layers of cake and custard cream frosting.
Solodko continues to offer Znakharchuk’s stylishly decorated cakes, which now come in seven designs named after friends and family. Znakharchuk approaches cake decorating like an artist approaching a canvas and, after years of practice, she’s identified her distinct personal style: towering cakes with clean lines and colorful buttercream applied in bold patterns that reflect her love for geometry and abstract art.
“People can still choose the color or any add-ons that they want, but ultimately the design is personal to me,” she said. “I cannot sell something I do not love.”
Seeing her dreams come to life through Solodko has brought immense joy to Znakharchuk, but the war in Ukraine, where she lived until the age of two, has added an emotional heaviness that sometimes hits her as she’s piping macarons or arranging loaves of challah. She and her sister are determined to help in any way they can, whether it’s donating cakes to local fundraisers or offering their business as a haven for refugees fleeing violence. In December, they hired their first team member, Liliya, a Ukrainian baker who had recently arrived in Boston with her family.
“I feel an immense responsibility to be a representative of our home country and with that responsibility also comes a lot of gratitude,” Znakharchuk said. “Our parents came here to give us a better life, and we can take those opportunities and use them to help others. That's ultimately what makes the late nights and everything worth it.”