And the best selling item at any school fair/ bake sale is...

[worriermum]

...the humble cupcake. Well-iced, preferably wtih the help of lots of toxic food colourings and sprinkles. And if you want to make absolutely sure that your dc has the most popular stall with the fastest-selling goods then stick a smartie on the top of all that icing and food colouring.

Yes, worriermum has done the research for you and after countless tedious school fairs and many hours spent making fussy goods for the fair, she can confirm the latest reserach findings. It seems no one can resist the plain but delicious cupcake...icing sugar and sponge cake win every time. (we ignore the bake-from-a-box brigade who give cupcakes a bad name..smug alpha-mummy baker emoticon needed here)

For Valentine's Day I put Love Heart sweets on top of mine - they sold really well (and weren't that great to be honest)

Lemon drizzle and carrot cake are winners here in sunny stratford upon Avon.

Chocolate truffles rolled in tiny chunks of toffee and coconut ice went down well at DD's party.

melody what is your recipe for smartie cookies ? sound good.

IME gingerbread men, especially if adorned with Smarties, go very well indeed.

Cupcakes need lots of sprinkles and glitter.

Not worth doing brownies ime, the unit cost is so much higher than that of a cupcake or muffin, but then tend to be sold for about the same.

Ditto rocky road, surely; mine is yummerooo (thanks Nigella - a more lavish recipe than the one posted on this thread) but costs more than £10 a tray. Even if I carved it up into 24 pieces (they wouldn't be that big) I would have to sell each piece for 50p (more than cakes usually go for round here) to make a notional profit. (I say notional because of course I donate the cakes, but still).

I have wasted many an evening making and icing cupcakes with sprinkles on. In our school, unless they have a dolly mixture or chocolate button on, you're wasting your time!

I have now discovered natural food colouring so they are baker-guilt free too.

I'm really surprised to read peanut butter in the recipes above. Are all schools not a nut free zone?

yes no nuts in our school as at least one child (someone in DD's class) has a severe peanut allergy.

So rocky road is out anyway! I always make brownies for school without walnuts. Apart from the fact that many children bizarrely seem unwilling to eat nuts anyway

We have no nut allergys in our school at the moment so school doesn't ban them and I always put mine in bags and labelled clearly.

Cece thanks for the Rocky Road recipe, just trying to work out what biscuit I can substitute that is gluten free. I always do a gluten free fairy cake for fetes as well.

Ice fairy cakes with circles of ready roll icing cut out with a glass, looks less icky than homemade icing. And less like other peoples kids have decorated them Then stick on mini smarties or other sweets using syrup or jam as glue.

Thornton's tablet is ok.
Home-made tablet wrapped in greaseproof paper and made from someone's grannie's recipe is to die for. :)

yes recycled. but for those of us without grannies, do you have a good recipe you can share?

Not someone's granny's recipe but I have posted a recipe for microwave tablet in the recipe section. It may not be authentic but it is miles better than Thorntons.

Smartie cookies recipe - www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5369/smarties-cookies

I use 5 smarties per cookie. For birthday parties I make them half the size and use mini smarties or chocolate chips.

Having read through all the posts on this thread ... I agree with the OP! Cupcakes with a great big swag if icing are the quickest sellers at NCT nearly new sales. They might be naff, or cliched, but they disappear fast. I usually make a dozen and it's quite gratifying to see them sell!

Nigellas Maltesers traybake always sells quickly, and so easy to make.

Hi worriermum
Didyouevermake a good curry? Just asking coz your curry thread is still active and has some good advice

Home made fairy cakes or cupcakes as they are now known as always sell really quickly. Loads of sprinkles or sweets on top seem to attract most of the kids.

My eldest DH (10) likes a nice plain cake - hates icing and sweets I know he is in the minority though!!

We made over £200 recently with our class cake sale. I did bake 52 of the cakes myself! We sold out very quickly.

This is always a sure fire winner @ any cake stall.

Orange / Lemon syrup loaf cake
125g butter 2 large eggs
175g c suger 1tsp lemon extract
175g sr flour 4 tablespn milk
syrup = juice 1 a half lemons / oranges + 100g icing suger
oven temp 180 / gas mark 4 for 45 mins

line loaf tin with ready made liner (easily found in most supermarkets or 'the range' if you have one near you.

1)cream together butter + suger add eggs + lemon/orange zest beat in.2) add flour and salt folding in and then milk 3) spoon into lined loaf tin and bake for 45 min. 4) to make syrup put lemon or juice and suger in saucepan and heat until suger dissolved. 5) when cake is cooked (inserted skewer should come out clean) pierce all over with skewer and pour over syrup leave cake to cool and absorb syrup before taking out of tin.

This is a very easy cake(I even make double the amount and bake 2 at the same time) and always seems to sell well either as a whole cake or as individual slices.

My rice crispie cake went very well at a cake sale for Macmillan -
200g butter
200g marshmallows
200g toffee eg Walkers Nonsuch but works fine with sainsburys basics toffees
about half a box of crispies.

Melt the first three together in a pan, will look a bit like vomit til all the mallows have melted properly.

Then stir in as many crispies as you can, so there are all coated.

Put in a tray lined with baking paper.

When cooled drizzle some criss cross bits of chocolate on if you want, but is lovely without.

Cut into large slabs or fingers, I like them about mars bar sized.

I don't have a microwave Chewy!

Okay, okay, fairy cakes it is. We're at an international school with lots of Americans so you have to forgive me the occassional cupcake lapse. But I'm not budging on the need for lashings of sickly icing on top of the cakes, topped with more sweets or at least one good smartie to ensure good sales. But you cant buy edible in the country we live in so perhaps we just have to compensate with more sugar.

Mummy2, since you ask....ooo this is horrible..Ok, I read every word on the curry thread with great interest, noted all the tips and um, ...implemented none. This is because it is really hard to get good spices where we live and because that thread was written before a very unsettled period in our lives...any remotely experimental cooking went out of the window in the face of ultra boring, ultra safe standby's like spag bol. But I'm ready to don my apron again and hope to try out all the tips. Have you or anyone else had any luck with any of the advice posted there?

cant buy edible GLITTER

You could colour the sugar with a bit of food colouring then let it dry. It's very sparkly and doesn't give you spangly poo!

Noooooooooo - does edible glitter really do that ? Really? Really???? [note to self: spend less time with poo-obsessed 7-year old boys]. But - REALLY????

But enough with the pursuit of knowledge - pantaloons how exactly do I create my own sparkly sugar? Do I dab a bit of colouring over a few spoons of sugar and then stand back and wait? Doesnt it all dry into one big sticky clump?

(REALLY????)