To think baking for school is a waste of women's time?

[SayThisOnlyOnce]

Not a taat but I have seen various posters mentioning 'and I've got to bake for the school fair/sale' amongst many other things they need to do.

If you LIKE baking, fine.

But most people seem to find it a chore. I have never baked for school and I don't intend that I ever will. I've never encountered a dad stressed out because he has been guilted into agreeing to bake something he doesn't really have time for.

IME the cakes are sold really cheaply anyway. If you costed the time and ingredients I'm sure its making a loss, ie it would be cheaper not to bake and just stick money in a bucket.

It just seems to be another form of everyday sexism.

ten pounds an hour, that's cheap wages. Less than minimum wage perhaps!(I dunno, don't live in the UK). But the opportunity (economic) cost of your time certainly isn't zero... If it's less than ten quid an hour you might want to think about not getting out of bed...

Kiwi It's £6.31 per hour.

I like baking so normally bake a plate or two for school stuff. It irritates me slightly that the cakes are always sold for 10- 20p (even large slices of beautifully decorated cake) simply because it doesn't even cover the time and cost it took someone to make. I also think they would sell just as many pricing them at 50p or more. Unsold ones get given away free.
I normally just do basic fairy cakes but some people send in such beautiful creations it seems silly to sell them so cheap!

Our school sells each cake for £1-£1.50 per cupcake or slice, so make much more at these events.

How is it taking an hour to bake something like fairy cakes? Ok you have to allow time for them to bake and cool, but that isn't hands on cooking time.

Wow art I know you are in Central London but that's a lot, ours sells for between 10-30p. A whole cake for £2-3.

Kiwi, as an aside, I haven't earned £10 an our since before the recession. I don't know many people people who do. Perhaps all those shop workers, ta's, cleaners and carers should just not get out of bed! My time most definitely is not marketable (for making fairy cakes) at £10 an hour.

I took an hour last week to make an apple and sultana loaf, 12 raspberry jam fairy cakes and 12 choc fairy cakes. I made the loaf first as it takes 45 mins to cook, then mixed up the raspberry cakes and put them in (20 mins) the. Mixed up the choc cakes (another 20) they all cooked together and I left them to cool overnight and iced them first thing before the fete. All in I reckon it was 1 hour solid 'work'.

Last week dh and Dd made a gorgeous devil's food cake for the fair, while I picked ds up from football (no sexism here). It was beautiful I was so proud of them, it was cut into 12 and sold out in minutes at 80p a slice. Ingredients were flour (52p 1.5 kilo used 200g so 7.5p, butter 250g -85p, creme fraiche (250g)42p, 3 tablespoons cocoa powder 10p, 3 eggs (30p) 200g icing sugar (50p) and a bar of value plain chocolate 35p- total cost £2:85, sold for £9:60 and dh and Dd had a lovely time making it- what's not to like ?

Oh and meant to say not women's work at all.

That is 3 different cakes though Mrs Koalaz

Koala!

Shop bought cakes are often deliberately sold last because if you hold regular cake sales unopened packets can be used at the next cake sale. This isn't a judgement on shop bought cakes - many children prefer a cadbury's mini roll to something home made.

If cakes are being sold at 10/20p there is something wrong with the heads of the stallholders. I think 50p is cheap! This is fundraising. There's time to give stuff away for free like a Christmas party or Leaver's party.

We sell small cakes for 50p, biscuits 20p and a nicely decorated cupcake or large slice of cake would be 1.00. This is still a lot less than in a cafe and even nicely decorated with more icing than cake cupcakes in the supermarket would be that price or more.

I know - I was agreeing with you merry. In 1 hour you can make 3 lots of different cakes and it is only an hour. And you can drink wine and potter about in your pyjamas, I wouldn't expect £10 per hour for doing that! and none of my employers would have let me either the bastards!

Hi anyone been flagged by tax credits

I'd buy the shop bought cakes anyway. I try and identify the shop bought ones and get the kids to pick those. (After dd found a piece of plastic and some hair in one of the home made cakes we'd bought). It put me right off of peoples home made offerings. You dont know whose kitchen they've come from or how clean they are.

But how do you know that they expect mum to do it

My DH bakes regularly. In fact a couple of weeks after DD was born I had to gently tell him that whilst I was very grateful for him taking charge of all cooking, I actually cannot just eat cake all the time...! (Some may beg to differ!)

I quite like baking, so if I've got time I'll do a 'proper job', if not get a dozen shop cakes from Asda for 50p and get DD to decorate them with plenty of icing and sweets! The going rate at our school is 30p - £1.

DH does his own cricket teas. His team, his pain!

At our school, we charge £1 for posh fairy cakes with piped icing or very big cake bars or slices, 50p for normal cup cakes and 30p or 20p for mini ones and shop bought. Biscuits also 30p. We tried going higher on the posh ones once but they remained largely on the stall. The ceiling seems to be £1. You still make a fair bit of money that way.