Would you be grossed out by homemade baked good in care package?

[BusyTraybake]

I am helping my sister put together care packages for her wedding. She is paying for the wedding party to stay in a posh hotel for a few nights. We are going to leave little care packages on the bed. I have an exceptional brownie recipe and was going to leave a trio of favours in the box. But sister’s SIL says she would never eat a homemade treat due to hygiene reasons.

obviously I will be clinically clean and wil even wear a hair net as I couldn’t think of anything worse than someone finding a hair.

Who is being weird?

I would happily eat it but judging by this thread lots of people wouldn't.

So people happily eat "homemade" cake in a café but homemade from anywhere else they won't eat? Odd. I would happily eat them. I assume people who bake and produce lovely cakes probably have cleaner kitchens than average.

Oh I think you meant every bit of offence.

Homemade baked goods are so much nicer than shop-bought ones. I'd be delighted if the package turned out to contain homemade goods.

Would never buy from a bake sale - my mother drummed it into us that you never know if things have come from a clean home, and I’ve stuck with that. I would chuck the home made brownies in the bin, sorry!

Unless made by a close friend or family member almost all actual home bakers have good hygiene inspections and mandatory training. I’m looking to start my own little home baked cakes business and honestly it’s pretty well regulated.

How sad and wasteful. Do you eat in other people's homes or do you insist on inspecting the kitchen first?

Also, why are all you germphobes accepting home-baked goods and lying about eating them? Why not say 'No thanks'? It would of course cause great offence and reveal you to be paranoid if you explained that your default assumption is that other people have poor hygiene so I can understand why you aren't open about it.

To be fair, if you arrive at your hotel room to a “care package”… who can you say “no thanks” to

In this case, the bride's sister. I can quite see why the night before the wedding you wouldn't say to a new in-law that you don't trust other people's hygiene so please take it back. Might not help the wedding go with a swing.

Exactly
you’d wrap it in some toilet roll and put it in the bathroom bin!

You would. I'd eat it and hope there were more!

I wouldn’t want to ruin my appetite for wedding banquet and goodies by snaffling brownie in my hotel bedroom.

each to their own

It's an interesting point about bake sales and so on.

I think homemade cakes and biscuits are a huge part of British food culture. Perhaps the most significant part of it, because our food culture isn't great otherwise. My childhood (and my mother's, and my grandmother's before that) was full of bake sales for charity and stalls of homemade goods at the school Christmas fete. Our village used to (in fact still has) a village show every summer with maypole dancing and cake competitions and I used to love going into the cake tent to see the delicious things people had made, which would then go on sale once the judges had decided on the prizewinners. As a young adult (bearing in mind I'm not even 40 yet) lots of people inspired by GBBO would bring in home baked cakes to work and they would generally get devoured. I don't remember anybody being this germ-phobic (or if they were, they pretended they were on a diet and kept their thoughts to themselves).

If everybody felt the same way about this I think it would just about kill off one of the only really great things about our national food heritage.

If someone visibly dirty with obvious poor hygiene offered me a home made cake, I might say no.
However I find it strange that so many people's default presumption is that every kitchen that isn't their own is not fit for food preparation...like they are an anomaly that they can clean their kitchen and wash hands while preparing food...

I'd eat them and I'd think it was lovely. I think also since you are known to the family your baking can be trusted! If you're only making 12 and the brides side will eat them then you have, say, 6 Brownies left where some people might eat them and others not (so let's say 9 people will eat Brownies and 3 won't) - so I'd do it!

It's on a par with the assumption that anybody who rings the doorbell unannounced is an axe murderer. Must be very tiring going through life with that level of anxiety.

Not the least bit hyperbolic 😂

I wouldn’t eat it, no. We are going to a kids party today, SIL gets a random school mum with no accreditation to bake the cake - we wont be eating that either.

Bake sale goods go in the bin too.

I am astonished that people wouldn't eat home made items. When did this become a thing? Back in the day everything was produced in a 'cottage industry' rather than a mass-produced site. It wouldn't cross my mind not to eat a home-made item!

Totally! Great comparison.

I wonder what the % of having both fears is.

I agree with this post. I don't understand what's happened either. Why do people place their trust in multinationals to produce safe food, against all the evidence that multinationals are motivated entirely by profit and not at all by wanting to keep their customers healthy, but don't trust home bakers producing some of the lowest risk food around?

I am guessing those who would not like unwrapped homemade cookies have never worked in a factory then. if they had they'd realise fast that home made is likely more hygeinic lol
How about she allows guests to make their OWN minds up upon seeing the care package, rather than deciding for them. I suspect it's got more to do with the fear of being seen as "cheap" tbh pure snobbery not concerned about slobbery! lol

Will you really tell your children they're not allowed to eat the cake at a party?

Do you not think that the impact of this sort of behaviour might be slightly more damaging to your children than the possibility of them eating a piece of cake made by someone who touched their phone and then touched the wooden spoon without scrubbing their hands with Dettol for 30 seconds in between?

God, that's so sad. Your poor kids.

I mean, nothing is particularly hygienic. Do these people not touch door handles or library books or money either?