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.

I love a good cake/bake sale. But then, I use baking (which DD loves and I tolerate) as maths practice. It's a lovely way of spending an afternoon on her half days, or part of a rainy weekend. However, as a shift worker, there are going to be days where I don't have time. If I'm working 8am-9pm, 45 minutes from home on the day before the sale, I'm not going to be waking up an hour earlier just to bake.

Did you just swallow one of my worms, zzzzz?

Clearly shop bought...

Yep. Those slackers at MNHQ are always claiming to be "too busy" to stock up on organic vanilla pod emoticons. Pfft.

The point of our school bake sale is to raise money. My cakes would not raise money as i am cupcakedly-challenged. I buy a pack of buns from Aldi and Ds sticks a Haribo in the buttercream on top - ta da!! Not exactly homemade or bought. Not exactly a mother/son bonding experience.
BUT 100% edible and money raising worthy. Do what suits your skills/lifestyle and keep the end goal in mind I say.

My dd's primary school didn't do bake sales so instead the PTA used to get a load of the big trays of doughnuts from Asda for a couple of pounds and sell them at the school gates at home time a couple of times a term for 50p each.
They always sold out quickly and was a quick way of raising money for the school.

I think a lot of the parents were relieved to not have to do any baking.

We do something similar with multipacks of ice lollies in the summer allwornout. Really easy way to raise a few quid, and no one has to put in any effort at all apart from the same three or four parents who always do everything