Release your inner toddler
'I could see that it would work in the UK, so I set up a Facebook page, outlined my plan and the response was instant - both from families of children in need and volunteer bakers prepared to supply cakes.'
A toddler is a child aged 1 to 3.
‘It was so beautiful, Gabrielle could hardly bear to cut into it at first. But by the end of her party, she was sharing it with all her friends,' Clair adds. ‘The wonderful thing about Baking A Smile is that it understands that siblings are just as deserving as their disabled brothers and sisters.'
The idea was never for Sophie to bake the cakes herself permanently - ‘I knew that would be too much for
Uchkombinat.com.ua me' - but she was determined to bake the launch offering for Baking A Smile, ‘because I wanted to experience what we were setting out to do for myself just one time'.
You can get your
toddler lunch ideas daycare to eat a variety of foods by offering tasty nutritious food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The consequence of Sophie's relentless activity was a relapse of the MS by October 2012 (85 per cent of cases of MS are of ‘relapsing remitting' type - patients have distinct attacks of symptoms, which then fade and return at a later date).
A diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at 29 ended Sophie Ford's career as a cake maker. But, as she tells Catherine O'Brien, her culinary passions inspired her to create a network of volunteer bakers who spread happiness to sick children and their families
‘I don't have time to volunteer, but I can bake cakes, so this is my way of giving back.' Saffron recently made a Beanie Boo cake for Freyja, who is now ten and well, although her health continues to be monitored. And because Freyja's sister Florence, seven, has been through so much upheaval, Saffron baked a Beanie Boo birthday cake for her, too. She even found time to make an extra cake for their brother, Stanley, aged one.
In February 2013, via the Facebook page, she linked up with the mother of a boy called Charlie, who suffered from Dravet syndrome - a rare form of epilepsy. Charlie was a fan of the TV series Jake and the Never Land Pirates, and had his fifth birthday coming up.
The disease occurs when a breakdown in the immune system causes scarring on the brain and spinal cord, which damages the nerves, but as an individual's specific nerve damage will depend on the sites of the scarring, no two MS sufferers have exactly the same symptoms.
The diagnosis was devastating - ‘I thought my world was ending,' Sophie admits - and inevitably life-changing, but remarkably, in the battle to stabilise her health, she has found a different way to bring untold pleasure to those who deserve it most.
Tyler Abbott, ten, from St Austell, Cornwall, has epilepsy, dyspraxia and speech delay. His mother Lesley, 28, heard about Baking A Smile through a friend. Within days of requesting a cake for Tyler, she was put in touch with local baker Sammy Hawke, of Sammy's Cakes Serendipity, who agreed to make a Transformers Bumblebee cake.
‘For two years, our lives revolved around hospital stays and appointments,' says her mum Kate, 35, from Kenilworth, Warwickshire. ‘For any parent, there is little more awful than having a child with a life-threatening illness, but out of the awfulness do come incredible positives.'
Once Millie was born in October 2010, the leg and hip pains Sophie had been experiencing disappeared. But in the summer of 2011, they returned with a vengeance. This time, both feet were numb and she had stabbing pains all over her body.
Forced to go on maternity leave early, she enrolled on a cupcake-making course ‘because I'm not someone who likes to sit still'. Soon afterwards, she made cakes for a charity event, which led to a few orders ‘and within months, I was launching my business'.
Sophie was 22 when she met her exhibition sales manager husband James and 25 when they had their first child, Benji, now eight. Two years later, while pregnant with Millie, the first signs of ill health surfaced.
Scroll through the Baking A Smile website or Facebook page and you can see the phenomenal results: cakes of every size and guise - princesses, superheroes and cute creatures - all lovingly made by generous bakers, whose reward is the same as Sophie's - delight on the face of a joyful child.
The bakers, who sign up with Baking A Smile through the website, donate their ingredients and deliver the cakes themselves, which keeps running costs to a minimum (the only rules are that bakers, who tend to be professionals or hobbyists, have a health and hygiene certificate and liability insurance).
Her mission statement - ‘Making a child smile is a piece of cake' - has captured the imagination of thousands of followers, as well as the attention of the Women of the Year lunch organisers who chose Sophie as an inspiring guest at their most recent awards ceremony.
She launched into a whirlwind of tasks, juggling looking after a toddler and a baby with running her business and organising a house move. She also decided that she and James should go ahead with their long-postponed wedding.
