Preschool bake sale

[Discopanda]

Hi, I know it's a subject that's been done to death but would really like an opinion. Wednesday is DD1's preschool's Halloween bake sale. Last year was our first as she'd only started in the September, I got all excited and she helped to make spider cupcakes and gingerbread stars with Halloweeny colour icing because I thought the point was that your kids help make the cakes to sell. How wrong was I?! All the other mums brought in shop-bought cakes and DD1's efforts were sold at 20p for 3! I've got all the ingredients to make cupcakes, plus gel colours to do themed icing, shall I bother to bake or just get a couple of packs of cakes from the Co-op to donate? I'm very much swayed to put in the effort because that's what I did when my school had bake sales growing up and it all seems a bit sad buying a cake that's just been bought from the shop and brought in.

Again, the dislike of home baking is completely fine (or hating knitting/ sewing/ embroidery/ gardening...)

It's the attitude "I am soooooooooo busy" meaning "You obviously are not" that is smug and irritating. By definition, as parents, we are all busy, and manage a house/do happen to work/ run a business with a cherry on top.

I have time to be on Mumsnet, so do you, we could both be doing something else right now (even in the train if you are commuting)

What BikeRunSki said.

neveramorningperson, I am in fact too busy to bake. I'm not making any assumptions about how busy or not busy anyone else is.

Do whatever suits you - personally I love baking cakes so am always happy to do that .............. I also think that most of us can find the time to do stuff we like doing - so for me it is making cakes, being on the PTA, volunteering - not because I am goody two shoes but that is genuinely how I like to spend my time, I am too busy to do gardening/housework/watching a film with my child because to me that it is utterly tedious and boring. . A friend recently invited me out for a meal and to go to a show - it really wasn't my sort of thing so instead of being honest I just said 'sorry, I am a bit busy at the moment'.

Never has said all that much better than me .

The kids tend to go for the ones with the most sweets on, I find. The Coop sells a pack of plain buns you can ice yourself.

I used to bake but often now I don't but send a shop bought contribution in instead. I have some health issues and dh doesn't get home until quite late - by the time I've done tea, after school activities, homework and bedtime I'm pretty exhausted.

I actually find the whole baking thing a bit weird and 1950s tbh. Why isn't it fine to say I don't have time for this? I'm sure there are things I do find time for that you don't.

I make them but just because I find it quite easy and I personally like to buy homemade cakes at a sale. In fact unless the kids are desperate we don't buy the shop bought cakes as I think it's lazy if the whole table is full of shop bought stuff. It's not really what a cake sale is about. I always think about the cost of what I make now and I usually make small cupcakes or brownies or flapjack or victoria sponge. I don't make things with expensive/time consuming icing or chocolate fridge cake, etc so it's a balance between donating a good cake but if they sell it cheap then I'm not so bothered.

But I am not sure I would contribute at all if the sale was so badly organised that they were selling them for 20p for 3 on the homemade cakes. That is ridiculous and a little pointless. At that price the sale will make hardly any money and people such as yourself are put off from contributing.

Hope it goes well this year.

Our school sells the cakes for 20p or 50p.

I personally don't like them because It causes great upset for the kids who haven't got any money and can't buy a cake because the mum forgot/didn't know the sale was on that day :(

I only buy the very obviously shop bought ones as they are unlikely to contain the snot, lick and germs of homemade offerings.

I don't have time to bake inevitably rubbish cakes with my children, because I am too busy doing things we would all rather do. On Saturday, I didn't have time to bake, because I was curled up on the sofa with a good book afternoon, and then Doctor Who was on. What's so odd about that?

It's not an excuse. There's no need for an excuse - even in the face of the rather odd condemnation that certain MNers seem keen to dole out to those who are "too lazy" to make a batch of cupcakes (but still make sure they donate something, however "sad" to what is, let's face it, a fundraiser, not GBBO).

(with a good book all afternoon. Five, uninterrupted hours, since you ask...)

zzzz I didn't put that very well - what I meant was I find all this pressure to bake a bit strange - there somehow seems to be this idea that I'm somehow a lesser mother if I don't bake.

But I don't have time. Because I prioritise other things. And I'm an adult so free to do so

(and if you read what I wrote, I have health problems which are limiting me a lot and half the time doing the essentials is a bit of a struggle so frankly no, while I may have time, I don't have the energy to bake)

And I think you sound unnecessarily defensive, zzzz. It ain't the home bakers on the back foot in this thread.

Are these schools or Greggs??

Jamie Oliver needs to go in and sort them out. These endless cake sales are completely at odds with the healthy eating/child obesity messages. Surely there must be other ways to raise money.

I'd happily make a donation not to have a cake sale.

About not being "too busy" to bake cakes. This weird notion that someone saying she is "too busy" to bake a cake (when directly asked, by the way, why she's gone for a shop-bought one for a bake sale) is necessarily saying that everyone else is "not busy". It's nonsense. Clearly, someone who is baking a cake is busy baking a cake. There's no extrapolation to be drawn about what this must mean about the rest of her life.

The default setting for a human being is not baking cakes.

(or is trying to "sound impressive", FFS. What tosh.)

They're hardly endless. We have maybe 2 a term? If that?

Cooking with kids is a great idea. But baking is just showing them how to eat with a load of unhealthy ingredients. Being home made doesn't mean its necessarily any healthier.

Kids are already bombarded with adverts for unhealthy (often sweet) food, targeted at them. .
They might as well take the kids on a group outing to a corner shop and say 'lets buy some sweets together'. (I'm waiting for someone to come along and tell me their school actually does this).

Wow! The OP just opened up a whole can of worms then buggered off! Honestly, we as a species - mothers I mean - are really quite odd ;)

sighs

'I'm too busy' is the truth, even if what I am 'busy' doing is reading a book, watching TV, or typing nonsense on mumsnet. I'm not quite sure why you feel anyone who doesn't bake needs to justify themselves to you with an 'excuse' you find appropriate, really. I don't understand why you get 'annoyed' by a stranger saying she is 'too busy' to do something you happen to like doing, even when she isn't breastfeeding, and therefore exempt from criticism, on any grounds. It wasn't a 'non-baker' who started this thread. It was someone who thinks not baking is odd/lazy/wrong. Do you see how that has shaped the responses?

But it's your call. If you feel good assuming that someone is being smug, that's up to you.