Keeping spirits up during the pandemic has not been an easy task, especially for frontline healthcare workers. Many nurses have had to adjust to working in a fast-paced environment with little time for much else.

Owner of Ice Cream Cakes TT by Mayqueen, Afeisha Sanchez, however, has found a way to juggle her hectic life as a nurse at the Sangre Grande Enhanced Health Centre as well as her own business, which she started at the height of the pandemic. Although Sanchez said juggling both workloads has not been easy, she enjoys getting creative with her business just as much as she enjoys serving others as a nurse.

“Working during the pandemic (has been) so stressful,” said Sanchez. “Not so much the workload (but) working in a facility and screening positive patients. It is very scary.

“The public doesn’t want to adhere to rules and it makes it hard for us who work in the health facilities.”

She said nurses are accustomed to working under stressful conditions. “It was the fear of the unknown that was the issue we had at the health centres.”

[caption id="attachment_959809" align="alignnone" width="768"] One of Afeisha Sanchez’s ice cream cake creations - Afeisha Sanchez[/caption]

Sanchez said last year a friend, who knew of her interest in baking, asked her to make her an ice-cream cake. “At the time, I was playing around with recipes. I made it and she liked it and I started to get orders from people in the health centre.”

She said she was pleasantly surprised by the interest in her skill and it encouraged her to do more. “At the time, there were not too many places that sold ice-cream cakes. I like to cook and experiment in the kitchen. I was on YouTube and I said to myself, ‘I can do this.’”

She said she started out buying the ice cream and adding it to the cakes which she baked herself but now she makes the ice cream herself as well.

“I Googled and YouTubed everything,” she joked. She said she tweaked many of the recipes she found to her liking. “It’s a small business so I can’t get all the ingredients I see in some of the recipes so I had to alter them using local ingredients to get what I wanted.”

[caption id="attachment_959808" align="alignnone" width="768"] One of Afeisha Sanchez's ice cream cake creations - Afeisha Sanchez[/caption]

Sanchez now produces a wide range of flavours including cookies and cream, salted caramel, strawberry cheesecake, piña colada, vanilla, chocolate and coconut.

“I used to have a waiting time of about three days for an order but now I can do an order overnight. Practise makes perfect.”

The mother of three said her eldest daughter, 14-year-old Amara Sanchez-Alverez, helps her with the business which makes juggling orders and the demands of her job much easier. Her daughter also helped her design the logo for the business.

“She helps whenever I’m making cakes. She’s my sous chef in the kitchen. Because of the hours I work, she also helps me make the ice cream and assists with deliveries as well.”

“This is a normal way of life for me. I don’t have many ch