**UPDATE - Thanks to the generosity of Creed Food Service and Booker Cheltenham, we have been able to reduce the cost of ingredients from £10,000 to £7,500, but we still have a way to go to hit our target! :)

2000 CHRISTMAS CAKES

24 DAYS TO MAKE THEM

24 HOURS TO DECORATE & PACK THEM FOR DELIVERY

This is our challenge!

When we heard about CCP's annual #HamperScamper for local families this Christmas, we wanted to get involved. Our 2 production chefs, Alita and James, suggested holding a bake-a-thon in our production kitchen - where we usually make the food for our park cafes in Pittville Park and Montpellier Gardens.

After contacting the charity's project director to see how we could best help, we learned that a record (and heart) -breaking 2000 families in our community had been referred to CCP to receive a food hamper this Christmas. We decided that we would like to produce something for each and every hamper, and what could be more festive than a Christmas Cake?

Many of those who will be receiving a hamper will be families living on the brink of homelessness and struggling to afford food and heating alongside the expectations of the festive season. Others may be isolated adults and young people, with no friends or family to celebrate this special time of year with. This year, the charity has seen a huge increase in demand from our community due to the persistent and worsening cost of living crisis.

We plan to make the cakes in small batches over a 24 day period in November, before the real challenge begins; - to ice, marzipan, decorate and pack all 2000 cakes in the final 24 hours. That's one every 43 seconds!

We will have a team of up to 20 staff and volunteers working in shifts throughout the night of the 5th December, and our trusty delivery driver will deliver the finished products to Hamper Scamper's HQ at 10am the following morning.

While all our time, resources, staff, equipment and other production costs will be donated for free, we need your help to raise the funds for the ingredients, which amount to a whopping 4800 eggs, and over 3 combined TONNES of flour, butter, sugar, dried fruit, marzipan and icing. (To put that into perspective, some other random things that weigh 3 tonnes include a blue whale's tongue, a small elephant and an ambulance!)

We would also love to hear from suppliers who are able to donate any of these ingredients, or offer cost/reduced prices on bulk wholesale.

Any surplus funds we raise will also be donated to CCP and all contributions, no matter how small, will be gratefully received.

Let's get baking!

Susannah Moffat

CEO & Founder, In The Park Ltd

For more information on #HamperScamper and the work that CCP do all year round please go to https://www.ccp.org.uk/hamperscamper