In an effort to raise both awareness and money for the charity The National Alliance For Mental Illness (NAMI), bakers in Los Angeles will be selling gray-colored cakes and other sad sweets this Friday and Saturday at a pop-up store dubbed The Depressed Cake Shop.
Located at the Buckwild Gallery (12804 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066; 310-398-0222), and open from 9AM until 6PM each day, the shop will be selling cupcakes, donuts, cookies, macaroons, and other baked goods, with the proceeds going to the Los Angeles chapter of NAMI.
Previous events have been held in London and San Francisco, with the latter one raising $1000.00 in a single day.
The Los Angeles edition is being organized by Rebecca Swanner, the owner of the bakery Secret Marmalade (and, full disclosure, a buddy of mine).
“I’ve dealt with depression throughout much of my life,” Swanner explains, “and baking gave me a path when I wasn’t sure where to go next. I started Secret Marmalade when the long term relationship I was ended, I was a freelance writer barely scraping by, and I had just turned thirty. I was feeling lost. I remember standing in my kitchen and deciding then and there that I wanted to go to pastry school in the south of France. I haven’t gone yet — it’s something I still want to do — but making the decision to commit to something that gave me confidence and a creative outlet provided me with a path.”
Swanner organized the L.A. edition after hearing about one of the other installments in the news. “I reached out to Emma [Cakehead, who started this event in England] at the beginning of July,” Swanner recalls, “and was curious if there was an Los Angeles branch as I thought it was definitely a cause that L.A. could get behind.”
Among the sweets available at the L.A. event will be “Misfortune Cookies,” sugar cookies shaped like prozac pills, grey cronuts, and Blue Velvet Cupcakes with Grey Frosting.
For more information, please visit depressedcakeshop.com.
To volunteer for this weekend’s event in Los Angeles, please visit their Facebook page.
Dude, you should totally go to this. And then tell me what you got in the comments below.