An event next month plans to take participants “Around the World” while raising funds for an important organization close to home. The “Great Chefs XXII Cake Challenge,” a fundraiser for the Women’s Resource Center, is set for Wednesday, May 2, at the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel, 700 Lackawanna Ave., Scranton. A cash bar, silent auction, and voting for the “People’s Choice Award” begins at 5:30 p.m., and a full course dinner and award presentations begins at 6 p.m. The event is crucial to the continued mission of the WRC, which provides emergency shelter and crisis response for battered women and sexual assault survivors. “It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year. We rely on the proceeds to keep the center running,” WRC Executive Director Peg Ruddy said.
Those proceeds totaled $70,000 in 2011 after welcoming nearly 500 people to the historic downtown hotel. The theme for this year’s third cake challenge is “Around the World” and welcomes at least 25 bakers from as far as Philadelphia, organizers said Tuesday, March 27. Bakers will be judged on beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels with up to $500 awarded to the first place recipients in each category. “The bakers are so generous.
This is a lot of work for them to do and donate their time and talent,” said Colleen Pettinato, baker coordinator for the event and a member of the Women’s Resource Center Association – the agency’s development arm. “They really are incredible, these cakes.” Celebrity judges for the event are Certified Master Sugar Artist and past grand prize winner of the National Wedding Cake Competitions Kim Morrison and past grand prize winner of Food Network’s “Cake Challenge” and author Colette Peters. Peters will be selling and autographing her cookbooks during the event, according to organizers. Some chefs have allowed the WRC to auction off their cakes at prior events, and community sponsors offer their support to further the fundraising effort.
The WRC served more than 2,100 women last year and responded to more than 11,000 hotline calls from women in Lackawanna and Susquehanna County. About 100 women and children were served through a safe home in 2011. Across the state, Ruddy said, nearly 90,000 clients were served last year through the hotline and direct services, making services provided locally among the more active in Pennsylvania.