Baker makes huge rainbow cake to say thank you to NHS staff
A baker who was forced to close her cake business because of coronavirus is using her left over ingredients to cheer up NHS staff.
Carol Smith had two months worth of wedding cake orders postponed, but had already purchased the ingredients she needed to make them.
She decided to put them to good use by making a huge cake in the shape of a rainbow for the "wonderful" staff at Peterborough City Hospital.
She contacted the hospital to first ask if it would be OK for her to arrange for the cake to be delivered, following government guidelines on social distancing.
Carol delivered the cake on Saturday (18 April) and handed it over to nurses in the Critical Care unit who had to transport it to the ward on a trolley because of its size.
Carol says she thinks the cake could have been cut into around 300-350 slices for NHS workers on various wards in the hospital.
Staff members have since sent her messages of thanks and photographs of them enjoying her colourful masterpiece.
Carol says it took her over 40 hours to complete the cake.
She started by using cardboard and metal rods to make the shape of the rainbow. She then layered the cake and made thousands of ruffles of icing to decorate the cake with the pattern and colours.
In total, Carol says she used around 55kg of ingredients to create the cake, including 90 eggs!
Here's how she did it:
Carol told us: "I run my cake business from home in a purpose built cake studio and like many Cake businesses I am closed."
"I mainly make wedding cakes so with weddings being postponed and other cancelled orders I had ingredients that needed to be used, I decided to make a cake instead of throwing them away and I thought it would be a good idea to do something nice for the NHS."
"All I wanted to do was to make them smile in what is a very difficult time for everyone."
"The smiles on their faces as they saw the cake made all the many hours and hard work worth it."
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