I was honored to be asked to bake a dessert for a fundraiser YCAP was holding called Raise The Barn. For those of you that don't know, YCAP (Yamhill Community Action Partnership), is the home to the county food bank, provide housing and veterans services, assist with energy bills, weatherize homes as well as support at-risk teens. To learn more about YCAP follow this link.
While I have been blessed to never need services from YCAP, I do owe them a lot of thanks. My husband, Aaron works there in the weatherization program. Over the past few years, I have experimented with recipes and techniques to keep myself from eating all the tests, I send them in for the staff at YCAP to enjoy. It was the supportive staff of YCAP that pushed me into opening up a business and sharing my baking with everyone. They have provided me with honest feedback that has improved my baking and has helped me get this bakery off the ground.
The dessert I was asked to make was for the “Dessert Dash” which works like this. The desserts are out on a table throughout the event for everyone to ooh and ahh about. After dinner, each table is asked to pool together a donation. The table with the highest donation gets to pick the first dessert, the table with the lowest donation picks last. So the goal is to make something that is going to open up those wallets.
The dessert I came up with was my S’mores cupcakes on a woodcut platter. The cupcakes were surrounding a campfire made of decorated sugar cookies. I felt this tied into the Raise the Barn theme pretty well. I have been on a decorated cookie kick lately and wanted to try something fun.
About a week before the event, YCAP came to me and asked if I would mind making a second dessert since they were having trouble getting enough for all 16 tables. I was happy to oblige. I came up with a two-layer confetti cake with custom YCAP cookies on the top and called it, Celebrate YCAP. I made the logo, as well as a cookie that represented each program; Housing (client services), Energy, Food, and Youth Outreach. Each cookie was hand cut and hand decorated.
Both desserts were a huge hit and both were selected near the top. The table that picked up the confetti cake was actually a table of YCAP employees and volunteers. They were unable to eat the whole cake at the event so they sent it in for YCAP staff to enjoy the next day. The whole event raised over $46,000 for those in need.
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