The Daily Camera
By April Morganroth
Monday, May 17, 2021 8:25 pm (Updated May 18, 2021 11:27 am)
Amy Klein, Cakes4Kids ambassador for Northern Colorado, sits for a portrait in her kitchen at her home in Niwot on Monday. The organization makes and donates birthday cakes to foster kids. (Matthew Jonas/Staff Photographer)
Boulder-based Cake4Kids is expanding and looking for bakers to help create birthday and graduation cakes for youth in domestic violence and homeless shelters as well as foster kids.
Ambassador of Northern Colorado Cake4Kids Amy Klein said the Boulder chapter of Cake4Kids is expanding and in need of help in addition to donations.
“Some of our bakers bake once a month and some have already baked 25 or more cakes, but we just really need more volunteers willing to bake for these kids,” Klein said.
She added, “It could just be that special spark in any kiddo’s life, whose life probably hasn’t been overly fair to them up to this point — we can provide some magic for one day.”
Klein was introduced last summer by a friend to the national nonprofit and by the fall she had the first Colorado chapter up and running.
“We made our first delivery in November and since then have delivered over 250 cakes and treats to underserved kids in the greater Boulder area,” Klein said.
Cake4Kids started more than 10 years ago in California by Libby Gruender who in 2010 had read a news story about a recently placed foster girl who had never received a birthday cake until her foster mother made her one. Since that day, Gruender partnered with volunteers and agencies across the U.S. to bake cakes for underserved children.
Now, spanning across 11 states, the nonprofit has delivered more than 25,000 free birthday and graduation cakes.
Klein, a mother of three, said she volunteered to open the first Colorado chapter because “birthday cakes are magical for children and it motivated me as a mom to bring that same smile I see on my children’s faces to the faces of other kids who otherwise may not have gotten a birthday cake.”
“We believe the simple gesture of a birthday cake has the ability to make the child feel valued and raises self-esteem,” she said.
Some of the agencies Northern Colorado Cake4Kids serve include: A Precious Child; Access Opportunity; Sister Carmen Community Center; TGHTR (formerly Attention Homes); as well as several domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters.
“Right now we are working on expanding our chapter into Fort Collins and beyond and also looking for bakers who want to help us serve our community,” Klein said. “The cakes are completely customized to the child and it’s so fun to see what they come up with.”
She said the top cake design requests include unicorns and Denver sports teams.
Despite kick starting during the coronavirus pandemic, Klein said the support from the community has been “truly amazing and we’re thrilled because people have stepped up in incredible ways.”
Auguste Escoffier School Of Culinary Arts in Boulder scheduled webinars “for our bakers to teach them how to bake better and provided decoration tips — like for example the frosted lettering on the cakes.”
In December, Niwot-based DRF Team real estate partnered up with Klein to host a gingerbread house contest and donated the proceeds to the nonprofit so it could provide treats during the holidays to foster youth.
She said, “We are still fairly new and looking into a number of different ways to expand and fundraise but will be partnering with DRF Reality again this Christmas season.”
Klein said she wants residents who are thinking about about volunteering “to know that you don’t have to be a pastry chef or professional baker to be one of our volunteers — you just have to have basic baking skills and have the heart to serve these kids.”
“The hardest part is not seeing the joy in these kids faces because we don’t get to delivery the cakes to them personally due to privacy laws but knowing that a child is smiling because of a cake we made is by far rewarding in itself,” Klein said.
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