Edith’s Christmas cake recipe stars in Sanctuary Care cookbook

A Malvern care home resident is beaming with pride after one of her mother’s beloved Christmas cake recipes featured in Sanctuary Care’s charity cookbook.

Edith Walker, who lives at Hastings Residential Care Home, is one of the stars of A Lifetime of Flavours: A Celebration of Food, Family and the Lives Behind Beloved Recipes.

Curated by Sanctuary Care, the money raised by the book supports Mental Health UK.

Edith has been a lifelong baker, and fondly recalls the happiness she got from cooking with her mother Muriel throughout her childhood.

“I think it’s absolutely brilliant that the recipe is in the book,” she says. “I am sure my mother would be watching down on me from up there – she loved cooking and the number of recipes she would know was unbelievable.

“Seeing the book has brought back so many lovely memories – when we made Christmas cakes we would put a silver sixpence inside, it was supposed to be a ‘lucky sixpence’ and if you found it in your piece everyone would cheer!”

Now a resident at the Sanctuary Care home, Edith still shares her passion for cooking with her fellow residents, as well as running cake decorating workshops with them, teaching them how to make fondant icing figures.

At the heart of A Lifetime of Flavours is Sanctuary Care’s Enriching Lives Framework – an evidence-based approach to care that focuses on maintaining identity, purpose, and joy in later life. The cookbook specifically celebrates ‘continuity’, one of the six senses within the framework, by showing how residents can carry on lifelong passions and traditions, such as cooking, even after moving into a care home. Mealtimes are a vital part of that continuity, offering structure, sensory stimulation, creativity, independence and connection. Good nutrition plays a key role too, helping residents stay active, alert and well-nourished.

The cookbook is free to download or can be ordered in limited print for a donation, with all proceeds going to Mental Health UK. It also includes a foreword from 2023 Great British Bake Off winner Matty Edgell, who shares how food shaped his own family memories.

click here for more details or to contact Hastings Residential Care Home