need to make lots of cakes for pta - help!

[LaBelleDameSansPatience]

I need to make lots of cakes for a pta cake sale next friday. I will only have time on Sunday afternoon, so I will have to freeze the cakes and decorate them on Thursday evening. The most popular, I think, will be little cup cakes and other individual cakes which children can buy. Have you got any ideas for easy cakes which will freeze well and be popular? Also, have you got any tips for really easy, fast, fantastically impressive decorations? Please??

Tray bakes it is. Then looking down my nose!

I think that the problem is that I am also a teacher, in a school in a very wealthy area with lots of SAHMs who vie with each other to produce the most beautiful, glittery, sparkly decorated fairy cakes. Each is a work of art. And their PTA makes megamoney. With everything it does.

Then I go home to my village (teachers would never afford to live in the village where I work) and my standards are a bit high. In my DD's school there has never been a cake sale and the PTA makes pennies. I made the mistake of suggesting one.

Dame - you are A Good Person :)

You're doing such a good thing by getting this going at your dd's school. Ours has a cake sale about once a month, and it took time to get going and for people to realise what is needed. Now cakes sell for 30p each. The obviously home-made ones sell out so much faster than anything bought in, and as has been said up-thread, the gaudier the better. Jelly tots/ sprinkles/ dolly mixture (yes, all on the same cake sometimes) go really well.

I always make chocolate cakes with choc icing and smarties on them. Always sell out. (weight of 3 eggs, same amount of flour, stork, sugar, bit of cocoa powder)

(on reflection, I think my dc go to the school where you teach....)

BlooooCow - does the cake sale make enough money to make it worth while.

?

Generally makes at least £50 if just one class. Oftena lot more.

For bigger things (children in need, disaster funds) when the whole school is involved, the amounts raised can be 3 or 4 times that.

Starting small and regularly is a good way to go.

I often buy the really cheap trays of fairy cakes from Tesco or Lidl and cover them with lots of butter icing, garish decorations etc - they sell really well (to children) - minimum effort but costs a lot less than faffing about making your own fairy cakes - maximum funds raised.

Well done you for trying - this is a big task and a huge effort and cost to take on for yourself esp if you are not a baker. Tbh if you don't have the support of the HT, who in turn will encourage the parents to support you, I think you are facing an uphill struggle....

What about other fundraising ideas?- our school runs a fairtrade tuck shop on a Friday break - it is run by Year 5. 50 for chocolate raisins, 70p for dried mango. Everything is bought in so the margins are less, but it does make money and stock keeps until the next week.

There was a thread a while ago about the best pta fundraising ideas - it was good - have a search and see if you can find it.

I was going to say what Ragwort said - I realised I could buy plain fairy cakes much more cheaply from ASDA than I could make them. Decorate them and you are away. I'd do that or tray bakes.

Good luck

Around here people only buy cakes that look (& taste) like they came from supermarket, no point in doing anything else.

I have just realised the same - I have bought some fairy cakes from the co-op and will be decorating them tomorrow! I will probably mix them with my poor misshapen creations to make them look more genuine.

I have also learnt that you do NOT let the children help you decorate the cakes. We did that for the Christmas fete and they were all left. They were perfectly clean and I see nothing wrong with beige and olive green icing.

Will look for the thread mentioned above - I think I read it at the time, but was not a member then, so it didn't really register.