Cakes and Causes

Sometimes the sweetest treats offer even sweeter side effects. New York-based company Bake Me A Wish! has made a scrumptious success out of proving just that. The business specializes in delivering gourmet cakes anywhere in the United States by a guaranteed delivery date, even overnight.


Offering rich, sumptuous cakes for a host of occasions ranging from the typical birthday to the anniversary, graduation and the get well soon variety, Bake Me A Wish! features a stunning array of dessert treats, including Red Velvet Chocolate Cake, Boston Cream Cake, Mississippi Mud Cake, Carrot Cake, as well as a line of Coffee Cakes, sporting such variations as the Caramel Apple Crumb Cake and the Viennese Raspberry Coffee Cake.

Is your mouth watering yet?

But it's not just the delicious products that caught out attention here at Business That Cares. Bake Me A Wish! has, for several years now, been a proud member of the philanthropic community as well, delivering - what else? - cakes to those in need of a little taste of home.

The effort started with the rollout of their Freedom Cake, a "deluxe chocolate brownie thickly blanketed with smooth and creamy fudge frosting, with an avalanche of sprinkles adorning the top and bittersweet chocolate shavings all along the sides." But this cake isn't just patriotic in name only. As with the "buy one, give one" movement I recently chronicled, for every Freedom Cake sold, Bake Me A Wish!, in partnership with Soldiers' Angels, donates a second cake to a soldier in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere abroad.

The Freedom Cake has even spun off another program, Operation: Birthday Cake, in which Bake Me A Wish! customers can earmark 5% of all purchases to the delivery of monthly cakes to America's service men and women overseas.

The effort has generated a huge amount of press buzz, and Bake Me A Wish! has even posted some of the soldiers' grateful responses.

And American soldiers aren't the only recipients of this generosity. Bake Me A Wish! also features the Change Your Life Cake, a creamy concoction of chocolate and peanut butter, the sales of which benefit the Friends of Island Academy in New York, a non-profit youth development center designed to council young people who've run afoul of the law.

But here's my personal favorite. Bake Me A Wish! also offers the Mortgage Apple Cake. This custom cake was designed by Angela Logan, an actress and now full time Bake Me A Wish! partner, who began baking and selling the cakes to stave off home foreclosure. Angela's efforts succeeded when she saved her home and paid off her mortgage, at the same time catching the notice of Bake Me A Wish!, which now offers the Mortgage Apple Cake for sale on its site and donates 5% of the proceeds to GreenDebt Solutions, one of the nation's leading non-profit credit counseling services.

Enjoying a delicious treat and helping to comfort soldiers far from home, help at-risk youth, and stave off home foreclosures - now that's having your cake and eating it too.