Port Aransas South Jetty

Piece of cake!

Happy birthday! Lou Cinfici presents a cake he made for Marlin Academy students on Nov. 19. Each month, the kids at Marlin Academy can count on an 82-year-old retiree to deliver them a big, tasty treat of his own creation.

Lou Cinfici bakes cakes and elaborately decorates them for parties for after-school latchkey program children whose birthdays are that month. (All of the kids at Marlin Academy get pieces, just like at any birthday party.)

Cinfici has been doing this volunteer work of his own undertaking for more than five years now on behalf of the Port Aransas Kiwanis Club, of which he is a member. (As a matter of fact, he was named outstanding member for the 2007-2008 year.)

“They’re awesome!” nine-year-old Marlin Academy student Kaleb Shafer said of Cinfici’s cakes. “I think it’s really cool how he puts designs on them.”

Cinfici bakes the cakes in his Channel Vista neighborhood house, and he tops them off with icing illustrations he creates with a baker’s airbrush.

He asks the birthday kids ahead of time what kind of design they’d like, and he does his best to give them what they request. Sometimes, the design has a holiday theme. He has created a Tweety Bird, a toy soldier, Santa Claus, a pumpkin, a turkey and more on his cakes.

“The moment the kids see something like that, to see their eyes, the smiles on their faces, it’s so rewarding,” said Cinfici, a retired merchant marine, Navy sailor and prison system medical director.

The Kiwanis Club started the latchkey program about 13 years ago. The organization later turned over the program to the Port Aransas Parks and Recreation Department, but the Kiwanis have continued to be involved in the operation, visiting students and reading to them, helping them with homework and arranging small parties.

Cinfici at work Right: Lou Cinfici decorates one of his cakes with an air brush that dispenses food coloring. Below: Cinfici takes a chocolate cake out of his oven. Working in his Channel Vista neighborhood home, he has baked many cakes for Marlin Academy students and for various community functions over the years, free of charge. It was when Cinfici attended a party that Kiwanis threw for the children several years ago that he got the idea to start baking cakes for the children’s birthdays.

“I said, ‘Gee, this looks like a lot of fun. I think I’ll start baking cakes for them,’ ” Cinfici recalled.

Cinfici’s wife, Nancy, taught him how to bake about 10 years ago. He learned how to decorate cakes in a cake decorating class.

The Marlin Academy’s approximately 25 kids aren’t the only ones who benefit from Cinfici’s baking. He also has made free cakes for functions at local churches, the Port Aransas High School Key Club, the Garden Club, Port Aransas Community Theater and the children’s tent at the annual Beach Dash.

Left: Lou Cinfici mixes the ingredients for a chocolate cake destined for the mouths of Marlin Academy latchkey program students. Above: Student Sawyer Ulch enjoys one of Cinfici’s cakes at a birthday party held at the academy’s headquarters in the H.G. Olsen Elementary school cafeteria in September. Lou and Nancy Cinfici, often accompanied by other Kiwanians, deliver the cakes once a month to the H.G. Olsen Elementary School cafeteria, headquarters for Marlin Academy. They join the children in singing “Happy Birthday,” and then they serve up the cake.

Are Cinfici’s cakes good? Just ask the kids. They’re not afraid to share their opinions.

“The kids are critical,” Cinfici said with a smile. “If it’s no good, they’ll say, ‘This is lousy! … But they’re a lot of fun.”

Usually, his creations seem to turn out just fine, judging from the speed at which the cakes disappear after they’re unveiled.

“I really, really enjoy it,” Cinfici said, “when they eat all of the cake.”