Wombourne resident bakes prize-winning Christmas cake

Luke is a service user at Staffordshire Supported Living, part of the Cygnet Social Care division, which supports individuals with learning disabilities, autism, mental health needs and behaviours that challenge.

He won first prize in the Cygnet Christmas Cake Off 2024, which saw patients and residents unleash their baking skills in a bid to produce the most impressive edible Christmas designs.

Explaining Luke’s design, Cassandra Palin, Deputy Manager at Staffordshire Supported Living, said: “The Christmas tree is vanilla sponge. The small train is chocolate sponge. There are some gingerbread buildings.

“The cake was all completed with the help of one of one of our service users, Luke.”

Senior support worker, Janet Jones, worked with Luke to create the cake. She said: “Luke has been with us since 2018 and baking is one of his passions. When I put the poster up about the Bake Off competition he was so excited. He bakes a mean chocolate cake and couldn’t wait to get started.

“He loves The Polar Express film and decided he wanted to do an extra special cake for the competition. He chose the theme and a colleague brought in the track to go around the cake. We went to the local supermarket and he shopped for all the ingredients. Luke got involved weighing and measuring, adding green dye to get the right colour for the sponge.

“We had bought a tree shaped mould for the main cake, but it didn’t come out right, so we had to go back to the drawing board and baked five sponges of different sizes, cutting them to shape and piping the icing on to look like a Christmas tree, complete with sweetie decorations.

“Luke never gave up and was so proud of what he’s achieved when he saw his vision come to life. It’s his first time entering the competition and he absolutely loved it.”

Entries were judged on originality of design, artistic ability and service user engagement.

After hearing they had won first prize of £1250, Cassandra added: “Myself, Luke and Janet are absolutely over the moon to be the winners. As soon as Luke found out, he went running round the service telling everybody we have won. He was so happy and proud, and it is a lovely reward for the hard work he put into this.

“As Luke had such a big hand in the making of it, he has chosen what we will do with the prize money. We are going to get a games console for our communal area where he can play with his peers and have movie nights.”