Good Samaritan: Teacher plans to bake a cake and give it to someone every day for a year

January 10th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Liz Hull

Last updated at 11:55 PM on 9th January 2012

A year of good deeds: Cath Webb with one of her Victoria sponges

When it comes to sweet gestures, this one takes the cake.

Cath Webb has set herself the challenge of baking a Victoria sponge every day for 12 months and giving it away – simply to make someone smile.

The teacher was inspired after she made a cake for a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer, and was overwhelmed by her delighted reaction.

In the nine months since, Mrs Webb, 46, has made sponge cakes, with a variety of jam fillings, for everyone from her own mother to hospital staff and the homeless.

Her determination to complete the challenge is such that she has even baked cakes over a camp fire while she was on holiday with her husband and their three sons.

Mrs Webb, from Hale, Cheshire, said she came up with the idea after reading an article early last year about the power of doing good deeds for others.

She said: ‘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.

‘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.’

It didn’t take long before Mrs Webb realised just how time-consuming her challenge would become. ‘The night before I started I lay in bed thinking I must be out of my mind for considering it. I felt very daunted, but just couldn’t stop thinking about what a good thing it would be,’ she said.

‘On day one, as I started baking the first cake, I realised how much washing up and waiting around there was, how much cooking and cooling and what a long list of logistics.

‘By day two I thought I wanted to give up already, but I was too embarrassed – I’d told everyone about it so couldn’t admit defeat so soon.’

Cake recipes

A couple of weeks later, while waiting for a cake to cool, Mrs Webb decided to start writing a diary, recording the friends and strangers she had given sponges to and other anecdotes from her day.

‘You can’t rush a cake cooling down because it just goes soggy, so one day I sat at the computer and started making a diary of who had received a cake,’ she said.

Her IT consultant husband, John, 45, and sons, Jack, 15, George, 13, and William, 11, who feature heavily in the diary, were initially sceptical about the challenge, but have since rallied round to help.

‘My husband was typically grumpy about it to start with, he kept moaning about how much it was costing in ingredients and he’s had to do all the washing and ironing for months because I haven’t had time,’ Mrs Webb added.

‘But on days when I’ve felt like giving in – like the time when I sat in the kitchen and felt like weeping because I had come home without any sugar – he has stepped in and gone out in the dark to the shops for me, or helped deliver cakes.’

Mrs Webb, who teaches at Altrincham Boys Preparatory School, even packed cake ingredients for a week’s holiday in Crackington Haven, Cornwall, and baked sponges over a camp fire.

‘On the first day it was a bit of a disaster,’ she said. ‘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.’

She is due to complete the challenge on her birthday, April 6. By then, due to the leap year, she will have baked 366 cakes.

‘I won’t feel relieved,’ she said. ‘It’s been a really incredible, uplifting experience and I will be very sad when it comes to an end.’

Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts,
or debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have not been moderated.