Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Michi Hines (left to right), Gail vanDuursen and Ruth Ann Hannah prepare shortcakes Friday at Christ Episcopal Church in Roanoke. Volunteers gathered to make more than 12,000 of the pastries in two days, a task that takes a lot of work but is also a lot of fun.

Jimmy Perdue, a parent of a Community School student, stacks boxes of shortcakes Friday at Christ Episcopal Church. Parents said they sell out of the desserts every year, and some people come just for crumbs. "I've got 10 bags in my freezer," one parent said.

Friday morning, Jon Seebo kneeled over a giant dough mixer in the kitchen of Christ Episcopal Church and pondered the task at hand: how to make shortcake for 30,000 people.

For nine hours that day, and more today, his hands would sculpt the dough Community School will use for its 28th annual fundraising Strawberry Festival.

As he squeezed the dough to test its quality, a factorylike operation continued around him.

Parents and staff of the private school in North Roanoke County had gathered to create more than 12,000 shortcakes in two days. And the socializing is as sweet as the pastry, they said.

"This is how we all get together," said Seebo, a parent of a Community School student. "This is a community effort."

It began at 9 a.m. with 900 pounds of sugar and flour.

Then the volunteer bakers added 360 pounds of butter and 50 gallons of milk.

In the Roanoke church's 15-by-30-foot kitchen, 25 parents formed an assembly line to create biscuits that would form the shortcakes' base.

They divided the work into eight stations, with three parents monitoring each.

Like clockwork, they combined the dry ingredients, then cut the butter, mixed all ingredients into dough, rolled it then cut it into small squares. Once baked and cooled, the biscuits were split, bagged and vacuum sealed before they were stored in a freezer at 30 degrees below zero.

The festival began with a few hundred shortcakes and became one of the school's largest fundraisers as parents began to sell thousands of the cakes.

In 2007, the school raised more than $60,000, which was used for scholarships and to maintain affordable rates for tuition-paying students.

Covered in ingredients, the parents talked with one another as they passed the dough and bread throughout the kitchen. They raised bowls and trays in the air while sharing memories of past festivals and hungry faces.

Through the years of the event, the parents said, shortcake customers have become increasingly serious about getting their desserts. Volunteers have seen festivalgoers in the parking lot plot different ways to bypass crowds for their shortcakes.

"I've heard, 'OK we can send little Johnny to go get the strawberries -- never mind, he'll eat them,' " said Carissa South, the school's director of development and marketing.

South said she enjoys the joy and excitement of people as they shout out preferences for their desserts and run with their treats like a child on Christmas morning to escape the festival crowd.

Every year, whatever the weather, the parents said they sell out of the delicacies. People come in droves, some from out of state, to support the school and eat.

"People come just for crumbs -- bags of crumbs," said parent Richard Amstutz as he shook two buttered-covered hands in the air. "I've got 10 bags in my freezer and I put them on ice cream."

Amstutz, who's both a parent of a Community School student and a trustee there, worked alongside four others dicing mounds of butter for the shortcake.

One would cut a pound-block of butter into four regular size sticks and hand the sticks over to Amstutz and three others who sliced them.

Butter covered the table and shimmered in the glow of overhanging kitchen lights as the five parents diced it and tossed it into the dough.

"Absolute joy," Amstutz said of patrons who eat the shortcakes. "A mouth-watering joy."

South said the spirit of the festival is contagious. A few weeks ago, she went to speak to a sponsor, and as she walked inside the office, she saw strawberries covering the entire front entrance.

"It was like Willy Wonka wallpaper," she said.

Community School students are creating decorations for the festival by adding pictures of shortcakes to famous paintings. One student placed a shortcake between Adam and God on a reproduction of the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

South said more than 41 percent of the Community School students receive some form of financial aid for tuition.

Along with the cakes, the school will serve frozen drinks and chocolate-dipped strawberries, all made from scratch.

And the school will continue selling desserts until everything is gone.

"People will still line up, 20 people deep, not knowing what they will get," said Chris Wilson, co-chairman of the baking committee. "They'll ask, 'What can we get?' "

Ruth Ann Hannah, an early learners teacher at the school, said the event has paved the way to her meeting new parents.

Hannah pounded away at dough near the oven Friday afternoon with parent Renee McCarthy and Michi Hines, administrator of the school. Waves of heat enveloped the trio as they rolled the dough, cut it, then placed it in the oven.

Bystanders could hear Hannah's pounding over the music as parents and staff laughed. She said she was working out.

"In this situation, it doesn't take long to get together," she said. "You're working together, you're dancing together to the music and you're laughing.

"I'm just having fun."