Bake Sale Report

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

Come back 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!