Light the candles for the sweet idea that Celeste Davis stirred up seven years ago, For Goodness Cakes.
Nonprofit founder Davis and her team of about 30 volunteers turn out birthday cakes that they give to children in five shelters in Pulaski County.
“One of the very first cakes I did was for a 14-year-old who’d never had a birthday cake before,” she says.
The shelters let her know about children in such hardship that basic care is a struggle, and birthdays are nothing special. Davis emails the alert to her team.
“They jump on it,” she says.
This boy needs a cake, and could it look like Captain America? This girl needs a cake, and please make it something happy.
“They make the cake, ” Davis says. “They decorate it, and they deliver it.”
“I take up the slack,” she says. And in case of a cake crunch, “I call up Jan [Lewandowski of Blue Cake Co. in Little Rock], and she whips up something.”
The crew dispatches 20 to 30 cakes a month, Davis says. Each cake costs $15 to $20 to make and decorate, and mainly takes time.
“It takes a couple hours out of your night,” Davis says.
The commitment is a lot to ask, she says, knowing her volunteers have as much on the plate as she does. She’s a wife and mother of three, paralegal and business owner. But like her, they find room for a slice of charity.
Davis had just taken a class on cake decorating. She came across a People magazine story about a woman who made birthday cakes for children in foster care in Georgia. By the time she had read the feature in line at the grocery store, the oven was practically heated.
“I contacted the [state] Department of Human Services first of all, and they were very open to it,” Davis says.
Her goal was a cake for every child in foster care in Pulaski and Saline counties — hundreds of cakes. She enlisted a crew of 60 volunteers. But every time somebody had a baby, it seemed, she lost a baker.
“It got to be too much,” Davis says.
She sifted the challenge to cakes for the children in these shelters: Our House for the homeless, Women and Children First: The Center Against Family Violence, Dorcas House for women and children, Methodist Family Health: Arkansas CARES (Center for Addictions Research, Education and Services), and Free Will Baptist Family Ministries.
Her birthday wish is for more children to be happy, if not forever, then a day. The answer is made of ingredients commonly found around the house.