Cake Bake and Sweets Show, Melbourne!

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were at Melbourne’s 2014 Cake Bake & Sweets show, yet the 2015 sprung up before we knew it! Not that we minded, we love getting out and about, letting people know who we are and sharing the Cake Angels love.

There are so many highlights from this year’s show but before we get to that, we firstly want to say a HUGE thanks to the organisers of the Cake Bake & Sweets Show. They are massive supporters of Cake Angels and what we do and we really appreciate all their help in making it possible for us to be at the show and also their contribution to our raffle. We love you guys!!

A major highlight for us was having our very own Cake Angels product available to sell at the show. We want Cake Angels to be not only an amazing charity, but also a wonderful community, and we want to be known far and wide! And what better way to do that than to have our supporters and volunteers proudly wearing a cap or a t-shirt or taking their Cake Angels coffee cup to work? Actually, the mugs and lapel pins were quite popular!

Man Angel Steve proudly showing off our wares!

We did three raffles at the show this year, with one lucky winner drawn each day! Each hamper was over $300 in value and our three winners were very happy with their prizes!

Our winners Michelle, Emily and Damian’s mum!

Just for something a bit fun, we also ran a Facebook competition in conjunction with Bakeboss, where cakers posed with their Bakeboss product and then posted a pic to Facebook using either #cakeangels, #cbss or #bakeboss hashtags to win over $500 worth of cake decorating goodies, including an airbrush and spraybooth! Congratulations to our lucky winner Nicole Haywood!!

We were pretty chuffed to be approached by a magazine who has offered to give us a four-page spread in each of their quarterly issues and also three radio stations who want to interview us! So that’s exciting!

We had an absolute ball over the three days of the Cake Bake & Sweets Show and LOVED meeting everyone who came past our stand to say ‘Hi!’. We are so thankful to our wonderful volunteers who gave up their time to come and help man the stand – an big thank you also to Steve, our very own man-angel, who stood proudly as the thorn between the roses for most of the weekend!

An extra big thank you needs to go to our Events Co-ordinator Mel. She literally worked her butt off to get us to the show, organise the raffles and prizes and co-ordinate the volunteer helpers. Awesome job Mel!

And lastly, thank you again to all of you for your support. We literally couldn’t do it without you!

The Cake Angels Team xxx

Cake Angels have been busy, with a whole lot of exciting initiatives in the pipeline. We have a number of new people who have volunteered to take on new roles within Cake Angels, so we are busy showing them the ropes and training people in their new roles, particularly volunteer coordination. There are quite a few new faces and we’ll be introducing you to them all over time..

A few weeks ago we held our 4^th AGM, which in many ways was a major milestone for us as it also signifies the start of many exciting things ahead. We have spoken about ‘big changes’ recently, and probably the biggest behind-the-scenes change is that Kirsty Bishop-Fox, our Founding President, has decided to step down from the role of President (and doer and overseer of everything!), and focus on training volunteer coordinators, as well as continued growth and support for the administration of Cake Angels.

There is no question that Cake Angels simply would not exist without Kirsty and we would not be where we are today without her drive, passion and belief in what we do. The extraordinary amount of time, energy, love and tears that she has poured into the organization has given it the strong foundations that are now enabling us to surge ahead and grow. We are all so very grateful for all she has done, and will continue to do in her new role.

We would like to welcome and congratulate our new committee as follows:

President: Kellie Arney from Kellie Cake
Vice President: Gabbi Armstrong
Secretary: Steve Arney (yup Kellie roped in her hubby)
Treasurer: Shari Jayanithie
Special Projects and Events: Mel McGrath from La-De-Da Cakes
IT support Manager: Udarie Kod from Lemon Tree Cakes
NSW volunteer coordinators: Nicki Carroll and Paula Grimes from CAKES CAKES CAKES
QLD volunteer coordinator: Zoe Byres from Red kitchen girls
TAS volunteer coordinator: Natasha Hansson from Lily May Cake Design
VIC volunteer coordinators: Amanda Pitts from Iced Moments and Vi Lieu from Vivalicious Cakes and Events
National volunteer coordination: Kirsty Bishop-Fox Simple High Life and Cake Corner

Of course the other big change to Cake Angels was our new website and database! We have been approving many new volunteers and have started to assign volunteers to events though the system, which is why you may have noticed that there haven’t been as many Facebook callouts for volunteers. While there are still a few little teething issues, it’s very exciting to get a real taste for just how much of a difference this database is going to make to the smooth running of Cake Angels and also our ability to be able to donate many more cakes to those kids who are in need of cheering up.

We have quite a few Christmas events coming up around Australia, so keep an eye out for email requests and Facebook callouts for volunteers. Some events will be purely donation based, others will be time based where you will be assisting with the creation of pretty amazing cakes like the one below. So if you know anyone who may not have registered as a Cake Angels volunteer yet, who might like to be a part of it, please let them know to register with us.

In addition to donating cakes or baked goods, if you would like to be involved or assist Cake Angels in any way, for example administration, fundraising, sponsorship, please contacts us at info@cakeangels.org.au. We’d love to hear from you!

Welcome to our brand new Cake Angels website. It’s been a long time coming, we have been looking forward to this day for quite some time and now it’s finally here. So to mark the occasion, we have our very first blog post!

To backtrack a little, Cake Angels (aka The Australian Cake Angels Network), began in 2011 when our founder Kirsty had the idea of donating some demonstration cakes from some workshops she facilitated for Handi’s Cakes, to the local Ronald McDonald House. Needless to say, the staff, children and their families were very grateful for their yummy, unexpected treats and it really brightened up their day. When a second delivery of cakes was made a short time later, the students discussed the idea of ongoing donations of cakes, specifically birthday cakes, to sick children….and now here we are, 4 years later, with so many wonderful volunteers who donate Cake Angel’s celebration cakes to children who have been diagnosed with serious medical conditions, throughout Australia.

When we first began, we never imagined that Cake Angels would receive the support that it has, to enable us to grow into the organisation that it is today. We didn’t realise how many people would volunteer to make Cake Angel’s celebration cakes or that we would bring smiles to the faces of so many seriously ill children. We couldn’t have imagined how the word would spread about Cake Angels and how well known we would become throughout Australia – and other parts of the world! So to say we are proud is an understatement! However there is so much more that we want to do, so many more families that we’d like to support, and sadly, many more seriously ill children who will greatly benefit from a distraction and a reason to smile because of all that they are going through. What Cake Angel’s birthday cakes do for these children and their families can not be underestimated, which is why Cake Angels continues to grow and why this new website and database is so important to us and our growth!

To date, we have had held back promoting Cake Angels as widely as we would have liked to because while we have had the volunteers needed to make the cakes, we haven’t had the resources available to manage the substantial growth that would follow. Until now that is! Thanks to Hybrid Web, we now have an online volunteer management system and we have some wonderful volunteers who are being trained to co-ordinate our Cake Angels donations. So hold on to your hats, because we are about to embark on an Australia-wide volunteer drive to significantly grow our volunteer base, enabling us to bring smiles to the faces of many, many more seriously ill children around the country.

If you haven’t already registered online, you can do so here. Take a look around, and please forward our website details to anyone you know who might be interested in becoming a Cake Angels volunteer. You don’t have to bake cakes to support Cake Angels – we also need people to offer their time to support us with administration, volunteer co-ordination, sponsorship and more.

Thank you so much for your support! We have so much in the pipeline and it can only happen because of our wonderful volunteers. If you would like to assist us or find out more, please register as a volunteer or send us a message.

If you would like to be kept up to date of what we are up to, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.