Draped in a blue-and-white checkered cloth and laden with pink roses, dahlias and daisies, the table at Hong Kong bakery The Good Cake looks like something one might find in a cafe in the south of France.
A banquet of baked goods ignites the senses: gooey chocolate brownies, rice crispy cakes and a six-inch chocolate cake with fresh strawberries smothered in decadent Swiss meringue buttercream.
“I hope you haven’t eaten lunch because I have lots for you to try,” says Karen Chu, the bakery’s founder, as she plonks a tray of fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate-chip cookies on the table. They smell divine.
The Good Cake may be tiny, but it is doing a lot of good: a portion of the proceeds from its baked goods goes to buying rice for Hong Kong’s underprivileged elderly.
Since establishing the social enterprise in 2019, Chu has baked more than 1,500 cakes, 8,000 cupcakes and 40,000 cookies. That translates to 4.2 tonnes of donated rice, equivalent to more than 65,000 meals.
“Nutritious food is the soul of a community but many people do not realise that one in 2.5 elderly in Hong Kong live in abject poverty,” Chu says. “That is 583,000 grandparents across the city living on less than HK$3,500 [US$450] a month.”