School fair cakes!!

[MumtoD]

AIBU being a bit disappointed that I was the only parent at drop off this morning with non-store bought cakes for the school fair. I'm a single parent, work full time and study and still had enough time to slap some icing on a dozen cupcakes

I must admit, only just getting in from work now, didn't get to the fair or see how much they were selling for. I enjoy baking and only banged a few fairy cakes together. I did however question my sanity when I considered piping them and decorating properly last night. They went in with a spoldge of icing and sprinkles

either buy cakes or just give the school the cost of the ingredients they would have bought (which ironically would raise more money than selling them, for less effort on the part of both PTA and parents)

This all over. Piss poor ROI.

It particularly irritates in catchments where so many parents pay through the nose for an average terraced house to secure a place at an 'Outstanding' school (decent education, no fees - result!), and still we all have to fanny around fundraising in this efficient way, instead of just coughing up a couple of hundred quid a year. But no, times tough for the squeezed middle.

There are better ways to have collective fun.

I would never ever buy homemade cakes. You never know what (if any)hygiene standards people have in their homes

Actual LOL at Jesus Crispies, though surely it's Jesus Chrispies?

I never buy the shop bought cakes at school fairs and I've noticed they always get left till last.
Windchime - if you knew what happened in cake factories you'd never eat store bought ones either .

I usually make homemade cakes.There is always loads of shop bought cakes though,far more than homemade one's.

The homemade one's they sell for between 30-50p each.The shop bought one's they usually sell for half that price.

My sister's boyfriend's aunt's mother's pilates instructor's nan once ate a homemade cake at a school fair and it had a pube in the icing. Just saying.

Yep, I'm in the "not worth the cost of the ingredients" camp. I used to bake cupcakes and I've baked a carrot cake. I don't think the amount they sold for came near the cost of me making them. Obviously doesn't arse the school as they got them for free but it's just daft to me. Then again, my kids' school was having decent perfume and smellies as the prizes on the £1 spin the wheel game/guaranteed prize game so I'm not sure they're particularly commercially minded.

I'm also not really getting the problem with someone donating shop bought cakes - better than donating nothing at all isn't it?

I made beautiful chocolate cupcakes with ganache on the top (why??) and they sold for 20p each apparently. I don't know exactly what they cost me but it was more than that. On the upside, DS bought something for 50p but got 50p in change.

This is what happens when you have KS2 in charge of cake stalls :o

I don't really get the 'not worth the ingredients' argument. You can choose to bake whatever you want, but I generally use stuff that I already have in my cupboards and I don't think of it in terms of 'I have used 1/5 of my bag of flour which equates to xxp'. So effectively it's a minimal cost or basically no cost to me. If you choose to bake a cake for which you need specific ingredients then that's up to you.

At our school cake sales anything goes, doesn't gave to be flash, bit of sprinkles and you're done. I'm on my dc's PTA and I couldn't care less if it's homemade, shop bought or whatever.

I applaud you op for being able it manage it, and I'm sure the were more yummy than shop bought, but whilst me (and my DC) love home made I can also snarf down happily a shop bought cake! Anybody that donates (or buys and snarfs) is undoubtedly loved muchly by the school and PTA!

XmasEve I am loving the baby Jesus crispie cakes - so going to make some of those is I can find any jelly babies in my part of the world...might have to be baby bear crispie cakes ;)

I'm going to make baby Jesus Chrispie cakes with Sunday School next week because of this thread. Thanks .
Oddly, I'd rather donate ingredients for an activity (I occasionally claim back cost if I'm skint)than see cakes I made sold for a pittance.
Somehow, it's more insulting to see a minuscule value applied to my hard work than to see it given free.

I noticed on the cake stall at my daughters school Christmas fayre yesterday that half the cakes were brought and half were home made.
What was sad was that nobody seemed to be buying many, I choose 2 homemade cup cakes and 2 slices of homemade chocolate cake, they were really nice but they were only charging 10p each for them.

What was the saddest was seeing young children walking round with their pocket money eager to buy things and then looking really disappointed when they realised they didn't have enough money to buy anything as a lot of the stalls were people with their own business selling things and charging a lot for their stuff. One stall was selling £70 handbags FGS

Ooh yes the crafters. We have banned them from our school just soak up the spend

I don't make them anymore because our school (specifically PTA) ask for things to be made all the time. I've grown sick and tired of them assuming I've got money to spend on dressing them up AND donating/competitions, etc. it's every couple of weeks they decide to ask us to cough up more money. It's ridiculous.

We have a limited number of outside stalls (4 or 5) and at least a couple of them are pocket money type things. However the children mainly spend their money on tattoos, face paints and playing games.

Our cakes fly off the counter, maybe it's because we sell them in a cafe set-up, so the parents get themselves a table, a cuppa and a cake while the children go off and do all the games etc as soon as they've eaten their cake. We get through masses of cups of squash too, it gets very warm in the hall and I think it's good for the children to be able to get a drink. We don't charge for any of the food and drink, just ask for donations which are usually fairly generous but means a child can come and get a cup of squash without having to pay for it. I don't think anyone buys the cakes to take home, they've usually got their hands full with DCs coats, bags, stuff they've bought etc.

Unless the baker is a professional baker, I wouldn't buy homemade cakes.

DC's school sells cakes at 25p (actually the last sale they were down at 20p)! I can't make even a basic fairy cake with a bit of icing for that - so I resort to shop bought cakes. As someone said upthread, I would rather donate the cost of ingredients than spend time baking and watch the cakes sell for less (though I accept this misses the point as part of the reason for the cheap price is to make the cakes affordable for all in a "mixed" intake).

I used to bother, I made a chocolate hedgehog cake, the spines were Matchmakers.

The woman running the stall put it straight in her bag, saying ' I'll give 50p for that.'

I wish I'd had the guts to object, but I was new and shy.

The school my girls went to in England banned home made cakes from cake sales due to allergies and food handling hygiene :(

They wouldn't accept anything that wasn't commercially packaged with a full list of ingredients.

Marcipex