JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
For some kids, especially children growing up between foster homes or in shelters, it can be hard to find moments of celebration that are just for them. One organization is trying to change that one birthday cake at a time. Deena Prichep reports.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Naomi Roberts in Beaverton, Oregon, takes baking seriously. You can tell by her decorating supplies.
NAOMI ROBERTS: I have cupcake toppers, and these ones make flowers. I have hundreds of pipes. I recently bought some.
PRICHEP: Today Roberts is making two dozen princess cupcakes requested by a 9-year-old girl she's never met. Roberts is a volunteer with a nonprofit called For Goodness Cakes. It's sort of a matchmaking service between volunteer bakers and organizations that work with kids who could use some cupcakes, like the ones in the oven, which are starting to smell amazing.
ROBERTS: So I think they are completely done.
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PRICHEP: When they cool, Roberts will fill them with raspberry jam and then swirl on some buttercream frosting, which she's colored to match the Disney Princess cake toppers.
ROBERTS: Blue for Cinderella, yellow for Belle and Snow White, teal for Ariel and Jasmine. Tiana has green, and Aurora gets pink.
PRICHEP: Roberts registered with For Goodness Cakes earlier this year, partly because she's a little extra when it comes to baking and partly because she knows what these sorts of gifts can mean to a kid.
ROBERTS: I was one of four children to a single mother, and we were just really struggling.
PRICHEP: When she was about 8 years old, a local business filled their house with Christmas presents. Roberts still has the little stuffed lamby they put under her tree.
ROBERTS: And I've carried that memory with me just all through my life, all through adulthood that in a really rough time - that there was just, like, glimmers of light like that.
PRICHEP: For Goodness Cakes started in Los Angeles in 2016 and now has thousands of volunteers in chapters across the country. They partner with foster care agencies, domestic violence shelters, groups working with critically ill kids, all sorts of organizations that serve children and young adults facing hard times.
JAMIE LEHMAN: You can't be healed or cured with a cake, but there's no reason that they can't be part of the healing process.
PRICHEP: Jamie Lehman is the group's founder.
LEHMAN: Like, I usually feel better when I'm eating cake.
PRICHEP: Those princess cupcakes ended up at HOLLA School, a Portland charter school, on a recent Monday morning.
KU'ANA BLACKMON: Oh, this is beautiful.
ROBERTS: Thank you.
BLACKMON: Oh, she's going to love it.
PRICHEP: Ku'ana Blackmon is the office manager at HOLLA, who receives the cakes at the front door. A lot of the school's families are at or below the poverty line, and the school gives every parent a cake order form as part of their registration packet so that every kid gets something baked especially for them.
BLACKMON: You feel the love, but then you taste the love, you know, because, you know, when you're stirring the batter and you're getting it all decorated, you're pouring yourself into that.
PRICHEP: The kids feel it, like third-grader Lily Lane (ph), who requested a kitty cake for her 9th birthday earlier this year.
LILY LANE: It was, like, gray and black and white and pink. It was beautiful.
PRICHEP: These custom cakes are amazing, designed to give the kids whatever they want - buttercream Pokemon, fondant rocket ships, edible glitter. And office manager Ku'ana Blackmon says that shows kids that there's a whole community of people, even people they've never met, who want to make them happy.
BLACKMON: You might not know the major impact of how it's hitting them but by their expression. They'll give us a hug and hold on extra tight, or they just have that smile that just won't go away.
PRICHEP: It's a pretty sweet message for a kid to receive. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep.
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