British baker offers his oven to folks who can’t afford to make their Christmas cakes

British baker Ed Hamilton-Trewhitt was heartbroken when one of his customers told him she couldn’t afford to make Christmas cakes for her loved ones this year.

The dense, booze-soaked fruitcakes are a holiday tradition, usually given as gifts. But they can take anywhere from four to six hours in the oven. 

With energy bills soaring in the U.K., Hamilton-Trewhitt’s customer told him she simply couldn’t justify the cost. So he offered to let her use his bakery’s oven. 

“I could see that she was genuinely upset because it was her one way of showing her family that they were in her mind and in her heart over Christmas,” Hamilton-Trewhitt told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

“And it’s a lovely thing to do, to make a Christmas present — to make something with your heart and with true feeling.”

Now Hamilton-Trewhitt is operating a communal oven throughout the holiday season at his Brickyard Bakery in Guisborough, England, free of cost. People whip up their cakes at home using their own recipes, then Hamilton-Trewhitt picks them up in a van and bakes them at his shop in batches.

“It kind of struck me that if one customer was getting upset about the energy costs of baking the Christmas cake, then there will be lots more out there,” he said. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s costing me so little and it makes a massive difference.”

When he put out the offer on Facebook a three weeks ago, Hamilton-Trewhitt says he expected a handful of people would take him up on it. But already, he’s baked several dozen.

Guisborough resident Harriet Morgan baked four cakes in the Brickyard Bakery oven. She told the Washington Post that without Hamilton-Trewhitt’s help, she likely would have had to forgo her annual tradition of making Christmas cakes with her six-year-old grandson. 

“As soon as I saw the initiative Ed was putting forward, I was filled with glee,” she said.

Why can’t people afford to bake?

For months now, the United Kingdom has been grappling with a cost-of-living crisis. And thanks to a perfect storm of geopolitical and market forces, people are especially feeling that burden when it comes to their energy bills. 

More than three million low-income U.K. households cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, according to a survey by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The U.K. anti-poverty organization is calling on the government to increase social support to keep up with rising inflation and costs.  

Even with a government cap, the JRF says the average household energy bill has doubled from last winter, forcing people to make stark decisions about whether to buy groceries or heat their homes.

“It makes me very sad,” Hamilton-Trewhitt  said. “I could jump up and down and rant about it, and I could get very, very, very political and point the finger whose fault it is. But really, that’s not my job.”

Hamilton-Trewhitt isn’t unscathed by the crisis. He says his bakery’s energy bills are twice what they were last year. But his oven is running 24/7 anyway, so he says he might as well use it to help.

“I know I’m not going to change the world and I’m not going to make a big difference. But if I can just make a little difference, then yeah, of course we’re going to,” he said. 

From feeding the wealthy, to feeding everyone

Brickyard Bakery is what’s known as a community interest company, which means it uses its profits and assets to serve the social good.

The baker recently opened a warming lounge where people can get out of the cold and enjoy free hot beverages. And they offer free, or pay-what-you-can, cooking classes.

“We can feed ourselves with healthy, nutritious, cheap ingredients if we just have those little bit of skills,” Hamilton-Trewhitt said. “And we’re all about sharing those few skills with people.”

But that wasn’t always how Hamilton-Trewhitt operated. Before opening Brickyard Bakery, he worked for five-star restaurants and cooked for an elite clientele, including, he says, Queen Elizabeth II. 

“It was all about chasing the accolades, and you know, food that was phenomenally expensive,” he said.

Then he says he a mid-life crisis, re-evaluated his life and pursued a degree in sociology. 

“I realized that, actually, everybody deserves a treat. It’s not just those few people with that pocketful of disposable income that they can spend on a flashy meal,” he said.

“So I changed where I was, where I was coming from, and I opened the bakery and we made it affordable food — but real food — for everybody. And I’ve never been happier. I’ve never been poorer, but I’ve definitely never been happier.”