What are your top tips for the school cake sale? Tell Flora for the chance to win a £200 John Lewis voucher. NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

With school starting up again and cake sales coming up, Flora would love to hear about Mumsnetters' tips for the school cake sale.

Here's what Flora have to say: “We know that the school cake sale can sometimes be a battleground but Flora is here to offer a helping hand. Baking with Flora Buttery couldn’t be simpler- just 5 ingredients and 15 minutes is all it takes. All it takes is a bowl and spoon! You can even get the kids to help for easy peasy baking fun and tasty sell out cakes every time!”

So, what are your top tips for the school cake sale? Do you have any simple fail-safe cake recipes which you know will sell well? Do you like to bake with your DCs? Perhaps you prefer to buy cakes? Are there any cake sale favourites which have surprised you?

Do you have any tips for navigating cake stand politics? What are the pricing policies in place at your DCs' school? What tips do you have for getting as many parents involved as possible?

Whatever your top tips are, Flora would love to hear about it.

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one winner will receive a £200 John Lewis voucher.

Please note your comments may be included on Flora's social media channels, and possibly elsewhere, so please only post if you're comfortable with this.

Thanks and good luck,
MNHQ

On ebay, buy some edible butterflies and fold - place on your cupcakes for a 3D effect and cover in edible glitter and glittery sprinkles

Definitely something pretty looking with lots of icing/decoration or theming-those seem to go best with the children at our school. Other than that things that are chocolaty seem to sell well too and traybake type cakes that aren't too expensive and easy to make lots of.

Be prepared! And if all else fails..send chocolate cupcakes! Always a winner!

know what ingredients are in them. dd has egg allergy. chocolate crispy cakes made with chocolate great, made with melted marsbars=allergis response. not great.

ds likes the little iced buns with interesting sweets on top. I love the jelly sweets.

I also like the cakes made by two of the mums.

Make cupcakes and use dolly mixture to decorate. Then also make a batch of Anzac biscuits as the adults will buy them. Transport them to school is a shoe box or other disposable container so you can hot foot it out of there ASAP.

This isn't massively helpful to Flora, sorry, but last year a group of my year sixes asked me to help them run a smoothie stall as a healthy option to the cakes. They provided and chopped all the fruits, while I operated the hand blender. At 50p a smoothie it went down an absolute storm!

i dont like shop bought cakes, i believe homemade cakes are a classic to sell at the cake stall in school, i think upside down pinapple cake is very appealing to adults, i have made these quite a few times and have had the whole cake sold at a time.

Make a few cakes and buy a few cakes, but don't take too many in. Having been a PTA member involved in several Bake Sales, we ended up with loads left over which were given away or thrown away.

Use microwave it's quicker and cheaper or make cakes which don't need to be baked ie fridge cakes. Use attractive appealing cases too these and many other baking items are cheap at £1 shops. Keep them as healthy as possible flapjacks are always a firm favoutite as well as rice crispy or cornflakes covered in chocolate. Make sure you consider some people have allergies!

I always hit the farmers market then pretend I made them myself.

Bog standard chocolate cup cakes with chocolate icing or real chocolate on top and as many decorations as they can take. we always make more than we'll need so the children and pinch a few!

Our school charges 20p per cake so I make and ice fairy buns as anything more elaborate means it's costing me more than the school will make. Our fairs have a theme and so I make the fairy cakes on the theme too. So I've made pirate faces, treasure chests, Olympic rings etc and these prove popular as the children embrace the idea. I always buy some of my own back too as my dc won't entertain the idea of anyone else's

Make a batch of milk, egg, nut and gluten free cakes - these always sell out and make you very popular with mums of the children with food allergies (me included) who can't normally join in!

A dinosaur or pirate themed cake is always popular.

Make cupcakes - they're always popular!

Chocolate Brownies are always a hit at our school. I always sell out. On one rare occasion however I bought plain fairy cakes and iced them. They still sold out!

We don't have a cake sale at our school fortunately as I am the world's worst baker. :D

Children love little moorish treats so simple fairy cakes and crispy rice cakes are easy to make and fun to decorate and the little ones will enjoy making them

NAMES ! seriously little cakes with names of all the children you can think of piped onto them! They really love that and enjoy looking to find their name and are so delighted when they do that it is always a sellout. We have also tried popular sayings and words and pop stars too

Easier than cakes, they take up less room, quick and quite cheap to make, and look amazing.

You need a packet of bread sticks, the fatter the better.
A big bar of chocolate to melt
Loads of sweets and sparkly nobbles and100's and thousands and stuff

Snap off a corner of chocolate and pop the rest in microwave until it's starting to melt but not completely melted. This is important because if it gets completely melted it wont set again. If you do completely melt it add the bit you snapped off and stir until that melts into it.

Dip and cover a good two thirds of the bread stick in the melted chocolate and twizzle about, when nearly set roll into bits n pieces or stick them on by hand if they are bigger sweets like smarties. Pop in a glass or jug to set.

Don't be the parent who offers getting more and more indignant and offended that their cake isn't selling.

Spangly shit on top sells any type of cake. Even soggy lemon drizzle cake.

If it is a bake sale that parents are going to be buying from, make gluten free muffins and put 4 together in a display box. Label with ingredients. (Dairy free too is good, but that means no Flora buttery!)

A parent having a child with allergies over for tea would welcome this, and could check with child's parent that they will be ok before buying.

Make smaller cakes as children prefer a couple of different small cakes rather than one large slice

Always make chocolate rice crispy cakes!!! they will sell out straight away! :-)