Woman Bakes a Sponge Cake for Others, Every Day for a Year - Food News - Cooking

Woman Baking a Sponge Cake for Others Every Day for a Year

2 Comments | Written on January 16, 2012 at 1:00 pm, by Lesley Kennedy

Victoria Sponge Cake If we had to describe Cath Webb in one word it’d probably be “sweet.” After all, London’s Daily Mail reports, the British teacher plans to bake one sponge cake a day for an entire year—not to pig out on, but to give away. Just to make people smile. Totally sweet, right?

She’s been baking the cakes for nine months now, according to the newspaper, after being inspired by a story about good deeds.

“It was posing the question what can each of us do for others, and I thought, nothing, I’ve got enough on my plate—a job, a husband, three boys, not to mention two cats and a hamster,” Webb tells the Daily Mail. ‘Then a good friend of mine got breast cancer and I really didn’t know what to say, so I made her a Victoria sponge instead. I left it on her porch, with a note, and on the way home she sent me a text which just said: ‘You can feed people with love.’ It was really moving and made me think, wow, what an amazing thing it would be to take a smile from one heart, bake it, fill it with jam, ice it with sugar and land it smack bang into the heart of another, 365 times.”

The Victoria sponge cake, named after Queen Victoria, traditionally layers raspberry jam and whipped cream between two sponge cakes. Hungry yet?

The newspaper reports Webb has given her cakes to folks ranging from her mom to hospital staffers to the homeless. Perhaps the craziest place she’s baked a cake: over a campfire during a vacation with her family.

“On the first day it was a bit of a disaster,” she tells the Daily Mail. “I left the cake over the fire and wandered off for a glass of wine. When I remembered and went back it looked like a giant, burned Yorkshire pudding.”

Webb’s sponge cake–baking marathon is scheduled to come to an end April 6, according to the newspaper, which adds, if all goes according to plan, she’ll have used 1,098 eggs, 160 pounds of flour, 292 packs of butter, 160 pounds of sugar, 183 pots of jam, 74 bottles of vanilla essence, 12 pints of milk and two packets of icing/vanilla bean sugar to make 366 cakes. Hello, Leap Year!

After spending all that time and dough making the cakes, you might think Webb would be completely burned out on baking, but, nope.

“I won’t feel relieved,” she tells the Daily Mail. “It’s been a really incredible, uplifting experience and I will be very sad when it comes to an end.”

Here’s hoping Webb’s challenge inspires others to say, “Let them eat cake!” All. Year. Long.