I know its been more than a month since I last blogged but between working now full time, my now 3 year old, my hubby and working cakes in between all of that my days can get pretty full and of course things like my blog is pushed to the side. But I have still been working on cakes and other special projects here and there:) One of those special projects was getting my first call to action from the organization Icing Smiles. If you don't know the organization Icing Smiles and you are a cake decorator (novice or professional) you need to haul yourself over to their website to see all the great work they do! Icing Smiles is a non-profit organization that, "provides custom celebration cakes and other treats to families impacted by the critical illness of a child." So basically they hook up families with very sick children with bakers who they call Sugar Angels to create a special birthday cake (or cookies in some areas) for that child's birthday. It may not always be on the child's actual birthday (as in my case) due to many of these children are in and out of the hospital constantly so its a matter of working with the family's schedule. Well let me tell you.. I was soo excited when I got my initial call to action email for the PA Rep Susan! Since I signed up almost a year ago I have been sitting just waiting to create some yummy cake goodness for an Icing Smiles child. So you know when I finally did get my email I was all on board:)
My Icing Smiles recipient's name is Ronnie and very sweet 3 year old who has had a very hard life. Ronnie is blind and deaf as well as has quite a number of mental and physical impairments. He also during emailing his mom back and forth about the cake suffered a minor stroke. Well needless to say I told Ronnie's mom not to worry that I was going to create a nice cake for her son's 3rd birthday and she didn't have any thing to worry about on my end. She told me Ronnie loves Barney so that was the theme of the cake. With Icing Smiles we do have some restrictions in order not to bankrupt the bakers on the cakes we make so the cake couldn't feed no more than 40 people so I went right up to the 40 serving size by creating a 2 tier cake. In my initial design it was just a 2 tier but while baking I decided to throw in a smaller middle tier to add something extra to the cake. I made a 3D Barney figure and some birthday balloons with Barney holding one of them. Well I can tell you Barney is a difficult figure and his particular color purple is hard to match! But in the end I was very pleased with the cake and so was Ronnie's mom!
Here are two pictures Ronnie's mom took, one is of the cake and one is of Ronnie and I.
You don't have to be a professional cake decorator to be a Sugar Angel so please if you want to help out a great organization and make some very sick children happy please sign up. If you don't bake cakes you can also help out Icing Smiles by donating financially.
It was a great experience and I can not wait until I get my next call to action!
Peace & Blessings
Kima
