Tiny but Mighty
Tween trades pint sized cakes for donations to charity
Irvinite Izenberg’s ornate cakes are diminutive in stature but big in flavor. Photo credit Toby Izenberg.
Pre-pandemic life for middle schooler Miri Izenberg was busy. A dedicated student and gifted trumpet player with an exquisite singing voice and infectious laugh, Izenberg enjoyed a full afterschool schedule: soccer practice, trumpet lessons, voice lessons, homework and more. When everything shut down, she suddenly had a lot of time on her hands. Then Izenberg discovered a passion that transformed her life and her kitchen.
“I made a cake for my brother for his birthday with my mom and I figured out that I really enjoyed decorating cakes,” explains Izenberg, who lives in Irvine. “It was a normal sized cake and it was striped on the outside. I just thought that it was fun.”
Baking, decorating, and even cleaning up the kitchen (“I’m working on it” she promises) fill her days now. But the decorating is what really drives Izenberg’s passion for cake making.
“I like the pipe work stuff,” she says. “A rosette cake that I made was super fun. I might try to make flowers at some point.”
All of this baking experimentation would result in a ton of ingredients and an excess of cake if not for the scale with which Izenberg bakes. To conserve resources, she decorates small cakes to practice her craft. One sheet of cake yields four mini three-tiered layer cakes. A major inspiration for Izenberg is blogger Chelsey White, whose Instagram account provides tiny cake baking tutorials.
“@Chelsweets also makes tiny cakes,” says Izenberg. “They make super tiny cakes, normal tiny cakes and big cakes. They have super cool decorating techniques and recipes.”
Izenberg’s baking and decorating skills have quickly approached those of her parents, both beyond skilled in the kitchen. She has decided gifting her tiny cakes to friends and family would make more sense than having an endless supply of cake at home. But this uniquely caring, sensitive girl has turned the concept of baking in exchange for money on its head. Izenberg encourages the recipients of her cakes to do something philanthropic.
“I just thought maybe I could do this for a good cause,” says Izenberg. “In businesses people pay for stuff, but I don't want to charge people. So I just thought it would be nice to give donations.”
For each completed cake, Izenberg provides the name of a charity. The donation size is entirely up to the cake recipient, but the cause is chosen by Izenberg. She personally researches the charities and, with her parents’ help, is learning how to vet each one before encouraging others to donate.
“I just find an organization that I think is doing really good things,” says Izenberg. “I've done the COVID 19 Solidarity Response Fund through the World Health Organization. There's this one that I thought was really cool called Facing History and Ourselves, and it's about educating children on racism and how to stand up to it. The most recent charity is called Children Now, and it's basically giving children a voice in lawmaking.”
The instinct to turn the cake making into a charitable endeavor speaks volumes about Izenberg’s passion for helping others. She also has passion for herself. Despite loving the baking process, Izenberg avoids letting it become too much of a good thing.
“I don’t want it to become work,” says Izenberg. “The whole idea is that I'm having fun while doing it. When I feel like making a cake, I just make a cake after school. I don't want it to ever become a burden.”
In order to keep her time in the kitchen fun, Izenberg doesn’t rush to fulfill orders. When might a tiny cake might arrive? It’s always a surprise.
“If you want to order cake, just know that it's not going come right away,” says Izenberg, who is willing to hear requests but makes no promises about which flavor of cake and frosting she will make. “There's no date for when it arrives. It's just whenever I feel like making a cake. But it it is for a good cause. And you get a tiny cake.”
Join her in making the world a better place! To order a tiny cake of your own and donate to one of her chosen charities, check out Izenberg’s Instagram account or send her an email.