Dazzle Charity Bakes

Hello, my name is Helmi, and I have started an initiative called Dazzle Charity Bakes. Dazzle's goal is to provide birthday cakes to women and children living in domestic violence shelters in HRM. I am currently partnered with three shelters, and I hope to be able to expand to many more.

These women and children have been through enough - they deserve to feel seen and loved with a birthday cake, on the one day a year that we celebrate people just for being themselves. I want these birthday cakes to remind survivors that they matter, and that we, the community, support them in their bravery, healing and recovery. Birthday cakes build self-esteem, inspire hope, and demonstrate that even though these survivors must be hidden, our community has not forgotten them.

Are birthday cakes quite a bit of fuss? Yes. Especially the way I do it: with customized cakes according to their individual tastes, preferences, colours, and themes, with premium ingredients, refined recipes, and a problem with adding "just one more" tier to everything. This is not just a cake with their name on it - this is a cake made with them in mind.

So yes, birthday cakes are quite a bit of fuss. But they deserve to be made a fuss of. Each woman and child spending their birthday under the protection of a DV shelter deserves to see their personalized cake and feel so special, so supported, and that they can do anything. Because they can. And I don't want a single DV survivor in HRM, who had the courage to leave everything behind, to be able to forget that on their birthday.

All funds raised will go towards Dazzle: expanding shelter partnerships, paying for supplies, ingredients, and other costs involved with the work it takes for me to plan, bake, decorate, and deliver each cake to its partner agency, who will then pass it along to its recipient. I will never get to meet them, but I don't need to. My cakes speak for themselves.