Holliston mom hopes 'Timmy Cakes' could help cure cancer one day - Boston 25 News

HOLLISTON, Mass. - It is a busy week for a Holliston mom.

She and a group of volunteers are racing to bake hundreds of chocolate cakes by Friday, cakes that could be the key to one day curing a rare form of cancer.

"Tim is the second of our four boys," Joanne O'Connell explained. "At the age of 8, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia."

For Joanne, that makes September not just a time to remember her late son, but a time to bake.

"It was my husband's idea as a good fundraiser because chocolate cake was Tim's favorite thing in the whole world," Joanne explained.

And thus were born 'Timmy Cakes.' The first year, Joanne remembers baking 80 of them.

This year, the group is aiming for around 300 cakes baked in a little more than three days to be sold at a church in Holliston over the weekend.

"So I do the measuring in advance of all the dry ingredients and then we come here and bake, frost and ship them out," Joanne said.

She mixes the cakes at the Clarke Showroom Test Kitchen in Milford, which donates space to the effort. While up to a hundred volunteers donate their time.

"I take the week off from work to do this," volunteer Joan Mulvaney said.

Tim died 16 months after his diagnosis and just two days after turning 10. But in his memory, the sale of the cakes funds cancer research and scholarships for students majoring in health fields.

"Tim was in my second year class when he was diagnosed, so I remember that year very, very well," volunteer Dianne Nault said.

Flour, sugar, cocoa, butter are the basic ingredients to the Timmy Cake.

"Just a good old-fashioned cake," as Joanne describes it, baked in loving memory every September.

For more information on The Timothy O'Connell Foundation visit timsteam.org

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