Cakewalking into people’s hearts
God’s Love We Deliver is a charity that prepares meals for people who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves
If the first step in Chuck Piekarski’s spice-cake recipe sounds ordinary — “blend together margarine and sugar” until they are “well combined” — the quantities are not: 8.2kg of margarine and 120 cups of sugar. And, eventually, 17 litres of eggs, 198 cups of all-purpose flour, 30 cups of vegetable oil, 16 cups of molasses, 63Tbsp of baking powder and 14.2 litres of milk.
And a total of 70Tbsp of cinnamon, allspice, ground ginger and nutmeg.
It makes 750 small cakes, almost a fifth of his daily workload, which includes cakes, scones and cookies.
It is tempting to say Piekarski is the man who has baked a million cakes, but that figure is a fraction of the sweets he has baked and sent on their way.
For almost 26 years, Piekarski has been the pastry chef for God’s Love We Deliver, a charity that prepares meals for people too sick to shop or cook for themselves — 19 million meals so far.
Ragueneau, the baker in the play Cyrano De Bergerac, did not approach Piekarski’s lifetime total of 9 million desserts. Thankfully, neither did Mrs Lovett of Sweeney Todd.
Piekarski bakes pies, as well as cakes, but from one end of the nearly 930m² kitchen to the other, there is not a barber chair in sight. There is, however, a stainless-steel cart with cakes to be inscribed — personalised — and the day’s list of names. Piekarski does the inscribing in purple, on white frosting.
These are not dessert cakes but birthday cakes, which are slightly larger. Each client, as God’s Love calls its meal recipients, is sent one, just in time for candles and a chorus of Happy Birthday To You.
The people God’s Love calls “senior caregivers” — older people who live with clients in households with more than one person — also receive cakes on their birthdays.
“Birthday cakes are the one really personal thing they get from us,” Piekarski said, before talking about how recipes these days are increasingly ingredient-conscious
— there is more fresh fruit, like the blackberries that went in a batch to be baked later in the day.
“We like to think we’re feeding people healthily,” he said, “but sometimes, we’re feeding their spirit.”
So there is more going on here than merely mixing ingredients according to a recipe and, with help from volunteers, baking them, packaging them with the rest of a meal and delivering the finished product. It is enough to take one’s mind off the contentiousness of the headlines, at least for an hour or two.
With a little flourish on the “l” as he wrote “Michael” on the first of the day’s birthday cakes, Piekarski said some things did not change with repetition.
Halfway through “Anthony”, crossing the “t” and dotting the “i” in “happy birthday”, he said his writing on the cakes had always looked the same as his handwriting on paper. “A third-grader’s handwriting,” he said. He inscribed a cake for Gabriel, then one for Nicholas.
Piekarski’s photograph is on Page 278 of the God’s Love We Deliver Cookbook, opposite his recipe for double-chocolate oatmeal cookies, in proportions that would not overwhelm a home kitchen, and the accompanying words reveal something he did not mention as he inscribed the cakes. His biography says he did not know what God’s Love was when he answered a want ad for a baker.
He found out during the job interview that the group was serving people with HIV or Aids a mission since broadened to include people with other serious illnesses. There was an emotional resonance — he had lost his companion to Aids four years earlier. He has been making hundreds of desserts a day ever since.
By then he had personalised a birthday cake for Helen and was starting on one for Barbara. Sometimes, he said, he wonders about Anthony or Michael or Daniel, what their stories are. He does not usually deliver meals, but once, in a pinch, he did. The experience was emotional, even if he tells it matter-of-factly.
“This guy had absolutely no food in the house,” Piekarski said. “His partner had passed away, he got sick and lost the business. He was just trying to pay the bills, and he didn’t have money for food. He offered me water. That’s all he had in the refrigerator. He thanked me, like, 10 times. You hope somebody would do the same thing for you. That’s what we’ve got to do for each other.”
He started on the cake for Alessandra, the longest name on the day’s list. The writing is a little tight. The conversation stopped for a moment.
Piekarski worked at an Italian bakery in Providence, Rhode Island, after graduating from Rhode Island College. He was a theatre and music major, but eventually came to a realisation: “It was not the life I wanted, always looking for work.” Just after he took the job with God’s Love, a call came from a theatre in the Berkshires.
“They wanted me for the whole summer,” he recalled, but he said no. “I made the right choice,” he says now.
Of course he did, he added: His last name means “baker” in Polish.
Birthday cakes are the one really personal thing they get from us. We like to think we’re feeding people healthily, but sometimes, we’re feeding their spirit