Easy school fete baking - help!

[Danascully2]

Hi bakers!

I can do basic baking, cupcakes etc but am rubbish at making things look nice. Also can't easily transport iced cupcakes to a school fete. So please help with easy recipes that look presentable and are robust enough to stick in a sandwich bag or something. Nothing involving rubbing fat into flour as that never works for me, think I have hot hands or something! I would much rather give a donation than faff about baking let alone actually attending the flipping fete but can't see that being an option anytime soon where I am.... And the school are generally great so I do want to help out. Thank you in advance from an exasperated mum with limited time and patience for baking :) (I may not reply until tomorrow but I haven't disappeared!).

My friend used to make a dozen cupcakes and then when they were just out of the oven she put 3 giant buttons on each one and 3 or 4 smarties on top - the buttons melted enough to be chocolate topping and the smarties decorated them.

V quick and easy and children loved them - nobody wants to be the one whose stuff doesn't sell!

I'm a veteran of many school cake sales (literal actual bun fights!) Children like chocolate and bright colours- nothing more sophisticated is needed!

M and m cookies go down well too sallysbakingaddiction.com/rainbow-mm-cookies/ . They do need to be M and Ms not smarties, having tried smarties the colours fade on baking. You can also press haribo sweets etc into the cookies immediately after you take them out of the oven for added child appeal.

I just used to make Top Hats for the school fetes... quick to make, nice and colourful, and kids love them

Crispy cakes made in a tray, put some sprinkles over the top and cut into squares.

What are Top Hats?

Rocky Road
use full size marshmallows and freeze them first, so they don’t melt when you add them to the melted chocolate.
easy to make, transport and sell

@scrivette A Northern Irish delicacy 😄

Some great ideas, thank you so much everyone! Love the bread sticks idea and also pressing haribos into things after baking. My own two primary age kids would always go for the lurid sickly looking things over anything boring looking, however tasty it might be. We normally have to send the baking in with the children at least the day before so has to be robust enough to be carried by a child along with bookbag etc... Also love the GF idea. I will be investigating the links and will feel more prepared next time the dreaded email comes out... I appreciate it :)

They look great!

I love the top hats. Never seen them before.

My top seller is gingerbread. Iced it sells really well and a decorated gingerbread person is definitely top of the pops with the under 7s.

Cornflake cakes. I melt a couple of marshmallows into the chocolate when I do mine (also very successful with chocolate Weetos!) Top with sprinkles if for kids.

Can’t you just donate bought baked goods? We have a lot of that at our school events and it’s fine, people are busy

Can’t you just donate bought baked goods?

As I said upthread, bought cakes were never popular at DD's school. The only bought cake that was popular was Battenburg cake. I guess we were lucky that we had a lot of good bakers at the school and certain mums were known for certain cakes eg A always made gorgeous butterfly buns, and B made the best millionnaire's shortbread. It was a small school so most people knew each other (and knew how clean their kitchens were)

I'd pop to the co-op and buy some plain cupcakes. Maybe add some icing and pass them off as your own.

That never works. I could always tell who had done this. Just be honest about it.

My friend used to make a dozen cupcakes and then when they were just out of the oven she put 3 giant buttons on each one and 3 or 4 smarties on top - the buttons melted enough to be chocolate topping and the smarties decorated them.

That is genius @ElizabethJaneHenchard. I'm nicking that idea.

Lemon drizzle cake. You don't need to decorate at all just pour the syrup with lemon zest and sugar on top.

The more it splits at the top, the better it tastes.😊

We used to make refrigerator cake for the school fairs, it used to sell out very quickly sometimes even before the fair opened. There's no baking involved, which is my saving grace, and it transports easily because it's quite robust. We used the BBC Good Food recipe (No chopped apricots mentioned in the recipe book version we made but coincidentally we added it anyway!)

DS in secondary now so I haven't made any for years. You might have decided what you're doing this time round but it's worth bearing in mind for another time. We used a huge bar of Galaxy on ours and it was quite a thick topping, not just like a coat of paint thinness. It was lush, I do wonder if it was missed when DS left that school...

Marble cake cut in slices
Cookies - the ones with M&Ms or Smarties always sold out quickly
Cupcakes - mostly shop bought
Muffins - again mostly shop bought

We knew we had a couple of GF children and the mums were always grateful that someone thought about buying a cake/biscuits for them as well.

I'm sure it would be cheaper as well as quicker to take in something bought, especially if you factor in oven/hob/microwave use depending on recipe...

It would. I'm sure the children won't mind, but as a baker myself I wouldn't buy a shop bought cake at a fete.

I think that is the problem - because I know I'm quite capable of baking something I feel I ought to rather than buying something! But as you say I'm sure the children wouldn't care...

Best off making normal cupcakes and then going overboard with buttercream and toppings. Children will want the cakes with smarties, chocolate buttons, rolos, Milky Way stars, revels, chunky sprinkles etc on them. You can buy lovely decorations for cakes but smarties and chocolate buttons never fails!
I once made cakes which looked very presentable but no one was buying them until the bigger chocolate ones topped with smarties disappeared... I learnt my lessson!

How about little plain fairy cakes with a swirl of buttercream on top, sprinkles and a small cadbury flake to look like a 99 icecream? Then you've got simple baking and decorating plus sugar and chocolate that is all kids really want.

I'd just make a chocolate sheet cake with chocolate fudge icing, cut into squares with loads of sprinkles on top.

Yes, children buy with their eyes, and are more likely to buy a cake covered with icing and decorations than a lemon drizzle cake.

I would go for the lemon drizzle myself.

You can up the ante on this by baking the cupcakes in flat-based wafer cones. It’s really successful.
www.oetker.co.uk/recipes/r/ice-cream-cupcakes

Cupcakes would normally be my go to but once iced they're hard to send in with a child who is liable to turn the box upside down etc!

That's bloody genius. My kids would love that.