Cheapest way to make 40 party cakes?

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What is the cheapest way to make 40 muffin sized cakes for a kids party?
They are for my 5 year old nieces party so don’t need to be fancy. I have been given cup cake sized plastic Individual containers so need to be big enough to not look lost in one of those.

Any ideas appreciated.

Batch make fairy cakes?
Icing sugar and water to decorate, plus a rice paper sticker thing on top.

Buy them from lidl or aldi.

Buy value brand flour, sugar, butter etc and just bake them?

Betty Crocker - did this for my kids party& everyone loved them 😂

Buy packs of plain cakes, Tesco, Lidl…then icing sugar, food colouring, maybe sprinkles and customise.

It depends - do you have all the equipment needed? If so then a simple white sponge cupcake recipe is likely to be cheapest. If not then you may need to start borrowing muffin tins etc.

Agree with PPs. Buy the ingredients and batch cook. You don't need the branded flour/ sugar/ margarine or butter. The own brand works fine. Simple decoration - basic buttercream piped or just icing and sprinkles or melted chocolate spread on.

I realised many years ago that cakes with decorations win the day .
If you're using muffin sized cake papers then don;t fill them right up , you need a rim of paper to hold the icing .

Use Stork (in the tub) it makes the nicest cakes , and an All-In-One method .

Glace icing with a splash of lemon juice . Not too thick or runny .
Hundreds and thousands ( I got a big jar on Amazon proper bright colours not wishywashy)

Buy cheap ingredients from Lidl. The WI tried out the cheapest cake ingredients against the more expensive stuff and they found zero difference.

The most expensive part of making cakes is the butter. American style sponge uses a lower proportion of butter and more sugar, which makes them really moist but also cheaper to bake! This is a good recipe: https://www.recipetineats.com/vanilla-cupcakes/#recipe

This. They will be very cheap yet delicious.

I genuinely did t know there were grander flours and sugar! I just buy the cheap Aldi stuff and always have. I always use stork as it’s cheaper too.

Thank you. This is the kind of tip I was after

My Tesco sell a pack of 12 ready made for £1.20. They aren’t the tastiest but that’s cheaper than I could make factoring in cost of butter, eggs, sugar and flour! You could then just add icing and a decoration?