“CAKE has no language barriers,” says Lynda Bundey who runs Stevie B’s bakery at Crediton with her husband Steve, and who has welcomed a Ukrainian baker to help her in the shop.

Olesia (pronounced Lesya) Lutsenko and her daughter are staying with a Crediton family.  Her daughter goes to school in Crediton.

Olesia had to leave her husband, her parents and her brother behind while she fled to safety.  They live in northern Ukraine near the border with Russia and Belarus.

Olesia is with Stevie B’s under the Government sponsorship scheme.  At home she has her own business making special occasion cakes.

In her first week she and Lyn worked together, getting ideas from each other, on the amazing Jubilee cake that was a feature in Stevie B’s shop window.

“We might not quite understand each other’s language,” said Lynda, “but we do understand the language of cakes, cakes have no language barrier.

“We are learning from each other and already we are trying some of Olesia’s ideas.  We bounce ideas off each other,” she added.

“Everyone here brings their own skills, Olesia has brought another skill, another dimension with cakes.   Already she has been ‘volunteered’ to do the dinosaurs!” said Lynda.

Olesia said she had been helped a lot by the family with whom she and her daughter now live in Crediton.

The family agreed to take the pair after Olesia contacted them.  On receiving the necessary documents, they went to Poland, flying from there to Bristol. where their Crediton family met them and brought them back by car.

Olesia said: “It was a very exciting trip but my daughter and I were nervous.  Our Crediton family received us very kindly and I am very grateful to them for that.

“Now we live in a nice old house in the centre of Crediton.”

Their Jubilee cake took most of the week to create with all the decorating needed.  The busbys that surround it were made in little Madeline tins using black coconut to create the furry look.

Lyn is not too sure what will happen to that cake.  She laughed and said she wouldn’t recommend eating it because of the amount of food colouring that had to be used.