Hallelujah - camera cord has arrived so I can get back to blogging! It's high time for a bake sale report.It was a grand success! A little crazy, a little stressful, but a screaming success. Friday, the day before, everybody dropped their goodies off at my house, and amongst all the boxes (we'd been in the house 6 days), a kingly mound of sweets developed on the dining table. Around 8pm my friend Lori came by and we hunkered down to a night of Diet Dr. Pepper, cellophane and ribbon. I printed off return-address size labels for each item, telling name and price, and we individually wrapped several hundred goodies in bags, plus about a dozen loaves.
The next morning I took my baskets, boxes, table cloths, aprons (I'd gone a little project-nuts one day and made iron-on "Carlin Hall" aprons for the Bake Sale workers), and lists and headed to the school. We set up a U-shape under a tent, with goodies on 2 tables, pizza on the third, and coolers of drinks and ice pops on the ground nearby. Someone dug out foamboard posters from the school attic and we hung them up - open for business!
Luckily the weather was perfect! Partly sunny, in the 80's - warm but not too hot. We ordered pizza from Domino's and sold it by the slice, made a killer profit on the water and sodas, and raked it in on the goodies. The other two workers and I were hopping the whole 3 hours of the fair, and I only ever stepped away to call for more pizza or run over to bid at the silent auction. Ed and the girls passed by once in awhile on their way to or from games, and for the occasional treat. By 4 o'clock the fair was over, everything was cleaned up, I was sweaty and had a killer headache, only realizing then that I was probably hungry and dehydrated.
Overall the fair made a record profit, about $2500, and the bake sale make about $400. I've got big plans for next year, like ordering more pizza (we kept running out) and charging more for it (at $1 a slice we only made $1 profit per pizza), rallying more help with the packaging (it took two of us almost three hours), and buying less water (I bought five cases from Costco and only used one.)But what we really care about is what I made:
Cookies: Lime Meltaways, Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies, Molasses Gingersnaps, Peanut Butter Cookies, Mint Surprise Cookies
Bread: Chocolate Zucchini Bread, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread (from a Trader Joe's mix)
Cake: Lethal Peppermint Chocolate Cake
Visit The Virtual Goody Plate over the next week or so to get the recipes I haven't posted yet.
As a side note, the twin-sized quilt my Mom made for the silent auction brought in $150, and we're already planning for next year's. My cookie-of-the-month offering only brought in a disappointing $25 but I scored winning this awesome herb pot for my deck - chives, parsley, rosemary, basil, mint, thyme and oregano, and no work on my part!
5 comments:
Dear Kari, what a sweetie you are!
We have never met, but I feel I know you, after all of the pictures of you I have seen and reports from your mom's letters in the 40+ years your mom and I have exchanged Christmas letters and such. I have albums of pictures of you and your sibs as you have grown up. Your mom and I were roomies for two years at BYU.
I truly loved hosting her and our two friends from the room next door, Marsha Stamps and Dwyla Perriton. What a joy to be with them for 6 days and 5 nights here in Driggs, ID. We all talked for hours, laughed, cried and ate our way through Driggs and Jackson, WY.
Your mom gave me the two most wonderful recipe books that you have autographed to me personally. I absolutely adore cook books, and I have never seen better illustrated cookbooks or more fun recipes to try ever in all of my collecting. They are fabulous and I can't wait to try every recipe in both books. Thank you so much! God bless you in your endeavors! What great ideas in these two books, they are so well done.
Laquata McDonald, quaymc@silverstar.com
your bake sale sounds like a huge success! I love the herb pot that you won!
you are out of control! gorgeous! i'm curious: what were your biggest sellers?
Everyone, you are so nice to show interest. It was seriously so fun. Quata - I feel like I know you, Mom has been talking about the trip so much both before and after!
kat - pizza was a big seller since the fair was noon to 3. Unfortunately no one in the past had ever kept record of how much to order, and some health code says we couldn't have it sitting around more than 1/2 hour so I had to keep ordering (I set it up with the manager ahead of time.) So we kept running out of pizza which was frustrating. I took close notes and next year we'll be in better shape. Also we only sold it for $1 a slice and at $7 for an 8-slice pizza we only made $1/pizza. Domino's makes good size slices so next year we're charging $1.50 and can make $125 instead of $25 on 25 pizzas. That's right, math minor here.
Cupcakes were also a hot seller - kids love them. We didn't package them, just set them out on trays and let the kids pick up their own so we didn't get frosting fingers. I didn't have many people bring cupcakes because if the weather was too hot and they got melty we'd have to throw them out, but the weather was not too bad so the cupcakes stood up and sold out.
Other than that it's hard to quantify. Everything sold well - brownies, cookies, loaves of bread. We had yeast breads, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, homemade challah, and my friend made key lime bread with coconut pecan glaze - all of them sold. Another friend with a big garden even sold jars of pickles from last year's harvest and they all sold. Someone else made fudge and cookie-mix-in-a-jars; they all sold as well.
At 2:30 we slashed prices to 50%, and by the end all we had left was assorted cookies/brownies just because we had had so many to begin with. One of the moms paid $15 and took them all for her book club meeting that night.
Really that is amazing! I am impressed with your careful planning, not one of my strong suits. I can only imagine how much you will make next year :)
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