Sweet success! ‘I built a village out of cake’
Lynn Nolan built an entire village out of cake – all for a good cause…
It was a pretty extraordinary shopping list. Nine litres of whiskey, 608 eggs, 66lb of butter, 73lb of flour, 12 jars of apricot jam and 462lb of icing… but then this was going to be an unusual cake… and possibly the biggest baking challenge of my life!
Cake decorating has always been a hobby of mine. I’ve got an artistic flair and an eye for detail – I love the way you can bring something to life with a spot of icing sugar.
When I married my husband, Paul, in 1976, I didn’t bake our wedding cake but I did decorate it with royal icing and silver trinkets.
For a time, I worked for Bernie’s cake shop – part of the Warburtons family – decorating the cakes that go in the window, but for most of my career, I was a florist.
The cakes I created were for family and friends. But three years ago, I’d earned a bit of a reputation locally after I’d made our village out of cake – Youlgrave in the Derbyshire Dales – to raise money for a new church roof.
In January this year, it was the Bakewell and Eyam Community Transport charity that approached me. ‘ Would you help us raise money by making a cake?’ they asked.
Instantly, I wanted to help. They provide such a valuable service collecting the elderly and those in need, and taking them shopping or to hospital appointments – but just had their government funding cut.
‘I could build a village?’ I offered.
We quickly settled on Eyam – one of the villages that the community transport service covered.
In 1666, the entire village of Eyam made the remarkable decision to quarantine itself in the heroic hope that it would stop the Great Plague from spreading. Out of the 350 inhabitants, 260 died. Centuries on, the village is quite a tourist attraction.
First, I had to do my research, walking around Eyam and
earmarking 24 buildings that I thought would translate well into cake.
Thankfully, the whole community got behind us, with local businesses and supermarkets donating ingredients and volunteers baking the fruit cakes – all to the same recipe.
‘Are you sure they need so much fruit in them?’ the army of bakers kept asking. ‘It’s so difficult to mix – my arm’s getting sore.’
‘Put some clean rubber gloves on and get your hands in there,’ I laughed. These cakes needed to be bursting with fruit so they held their shape when I got my hands on them.
In June, 65 home-made fruit cakes were delivered to me. I laced them with whiskey to preserve them.
I set to work, rolling, cutting and colouring icing, shaping
marzipan, building railings out of painted cocktail sticks, guttering out of black straws and wiring tiny LED lights into the dwellings. I worked on the creations every day, with Paul making me cups of tea and reminding me to take breaks. Each completed cake was stored in our spare bedroom.
Some of the smaller buildings could be completed in a few days, whereas others took weeks. One of the last to do was Eyam Hall, which had steps up the front. ‘Please can you build me a plinth?’ I asked Paul, 65, who agreed.
Once we’d got the structure on the plinth, I pushed it back to get a better look – and it fell off the back of the kitchen worktop and scattered across the floor.
I was heartbroken. All that work. The many hours that had gone into it… all in crumbs on my kitchen floor. Paul quietly took our dog out for a walk, while I sat down and cried.
But I pulled myself together, and started work on Eyam Hall version two.
For three months – or 645 hours – I closed myself off from family and friends while I worked, with one exception.
I still managed to make a cake in September for our son, Kris, who turned 40, and our granddaughter, Frankie, who turned seven.
I’d asked Frankie what kind of cake she wanted, but she wasn’t sure. She did mention her love of Harry Potter – ‘I’m going to marry him, Grandma,’ she told me.
I constructed the iconic Hogwarts school hall for her – complete with her daddy on a broomstick on top! I was planning my other granddaughter Isobella’s next cake too.
But back to Eyam … on 13 October, with the help of Bakewell and Eyam Community Transport, we moved the entire model village along to the real thing. That journey was stressful. I travelled with the cakes, cursing each bump in the road.
It took two days to construct the cake village and check that all the lights were working. The buzz in the community was contagious, and during the unveiling at the Church of St Lawrence (where some plague victims are buried), people paid to see my creation. All funds went to the bus service.
‘It’s amazing,’ people gasped, seeing it for the first time.
‘And it’s all cake?’ others asked, in disbelief.
It was such a lovely feeling. The exhibition is open for six weeks, and, afterwards, the cakes will be auctioned off on 30 November.
Now, at 62, I’m sure I’ll have another cake project to get my teeth into soon. In the meantime, I’ll be making the costumes for the Christmas panto in my village of Youlgrave, attending our local flower festival and running craft days in my studio. Whenever there’s a community project, I’m always happy to help.