Interactive Birthday Cake in React

This project began as a creative exercise in building an interactive user interface using modern front-end tools. I used React to manage the component structure and state, and Tailwind CSS to style the UI efficiently. The application displays a birthday cake graphic with candles that the user can click to toggle their flame animations. At its core, this project helped me solidify my understanding of how React components encapsulate both behavior and appearance, and how component state drives interaction.

Beyond the basics of rendering static content, this project taught me how to handle user input and update the UI responsively. Managing state in React was a valuable lesson, especially in a scenario where multiple components depend on shared values. I also learned how Tailwind simplifies styling by applying utility classes directly within markup, reducing the need to maintain large CSS files. Overall, this project strengthened my confidence in building responsive, interactive web applications with modern frameworks.

Repo: https://github.com/rystuckey/cake