The Guardian - Free Cakes for Kids

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Mucking in at the free cake charity
baking workshop
Free Cake for Kids bakes birthday cakes for children who usually
go without. Volunteer Tessa Lidstone invited us to one of its
joyously messy workshops
• Invite us to your get-­together
The Guardian, Saturday 7 December 2013
Free Cakes for Kids provides baking workshops for parents and children in Hackney. Photography: Michael Thomas
Jones for the Guardian
What was the occasion?
Free Cake for Kids is a nationwide community service that provides homemade
birthday cakes for children who wouldn't normally receive them. The reasons vary;
sometimes it's financial, or the family are homeless or living in temporary
accommodation. Other times it's because a sibling is unwell or disabled, and so the
parents just don't have the time to bake.
I volunteer for the Hackney branch, which has been running for about two years now. I
started off as a volunteer baker, but then I moved on to helping out the committee with
admin, writing press releases and raising the profile of FCFK. We think the cake needs
to be as personal to the child as possible – without breaking confidentiality rules, of
course – so the bakers are given rough details of the child's age, their favourite colour,
cartoon, toy or TV show, then they make the cake with that in mind, and drop it off at a
children's centre or the child's school. We average around 2-3 cakes a week now, we're
so pleased that word is getting around and the referrals are really increasing.
We wanted to extend our reach beyond helping those in unfortunate circumstances by
working with families within the community, so we applied for a grant from Hackney
council to put on baking workshops for parents and children. Luckily we were given the
funding, so this was our first workshop – it was so much fun, but pretty crazy and
messy at times!
What was on the menu?
We decided from the outset to pick a fail-safe, easily adaptable recipe that could be
replicated at home, so we chose to make blueberry and yoghurt muffins. We also
brought additional ingredients such as pears, bananas and lemons, just to show that
once you have the basic recipe, you can make a muffin out of anything.
We had enough room for 10 families; I'd envisaged one parent and one child, but it
turned out to be more like one parent with two or three kids! We didn't want anything
to be daunting, so it seemed to make sense to use cup measures instead of weighing
scales.
We also provided a goodie bag for each family to take home with all the equipment
they would need, such as muffin tins and measuring spoons. The oven at the children's
centre was tiny; about the size of a microwave, so we had a bit of a bottleneck when it
came to baking the 60 muffins, but they all turned out really well and tasted great.
What did you talk about?
Aside from talking with the families and explaining the aim of the Free Cake for Kids
service, we talked about how it wasn't the mums cooking and the children watching,
but actually the kids doing all the work and the mums watching them – it was so
brilliant to watch them learn. Afterwards, we heard from the community centre that
more than half of the families went home and made the muffins again that weekend. It
was so kind of the centre to let us hold the workshop there. Hopefully we'll be able to
improve on the amount of mess at the next workshop in January, and given how many
kids were running around, I might have to get a megaphone!
www.freecakesforkidshackney.com
Best blueberry and yoghurt muffins
You can bake these muffins a day in advance and store them in a sealed plastic bag at
room temperature. Try using bananas, pears, walnuts and dried cranberries as
variations.
Makes 12
3 cups (300g) plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
¾ cup (175g) light brown sugar
1 cup (250ml) plain yoghurt/buttermilk
½ cup (125ml) butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup blueberries
Sugar and cinnamon, for dusting
1 Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Sift the flour, baking powder,
bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl.
2 Put the eggs, sugar, yoghurt/buttermilk, butter and vanilla in a second bowl and beat
until blended.
3 Add the egg mixture to the flour, along with the blueberries. Use a rubber spatula to
fold together gently until just combined. Do not overmix; the mixture should not be
smooth.
4 Divide the mixture among the muffin cups. Sprinkle over a dusting of sugar and
cinnamon then bake until the edges shrink from the sides of the tin and a toothpick
inserted into the muffins comes out clean – 12-15 minutes.
5 Leave the muffins in the tin for 5 minutes before removing, then place the muffins on
a wire rack to cool further. Serve while still warm or at room temperature.
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