What could possibly go wrong with a bake sale?

Last weekend, I had a bake sale in my front yard for the neighbourhood. I’m in the hunt for a job and before I go out there announcing to the world that I know a thing or two about food, I wanted to test myself and my capabilities in the kitchen. I knew that something this big would require a lot of planning and I was almost giddy thinking about all the lists that I would have to draw up. But first, a little bit of due diligence. Most articles warned me to take care about these five things:

• Checking local laws;
• Location of the bake sale;
• Marketing;
• Portioning; and
• Pricing.

Now, let me tell you my story.

A week before, I started learning about the New Hampshire Homestead Food Operation Rules and that gave me a clear picture of what I could and what I could not cook. Like for example, I cannot cook and sell anything with vegetables in it, unless I’m cooking in a kitchen inspected and licensed by the government. This gave me a starting point, and list #1. The initial menu consisted of just five items (and in retrospect, I should have probably stuck to that) but I got too excited about what customers might like and kept adding to the list.

When it comes to bake sales, you want something small and something that you could portion off before you place it on the table as the last thing you want is trouble cutting in front of a customer. Plus it is quick and efficient. Brownies, cookies, tarts, cupcakes, are all easy to pick up.

I wanted to add some pizzazz, so I decided to add a layer cake to the menu. I had seen one on Sally’s Baking Addiction with two toned buttercream roses and ever since I have been dreaming about it. Normally, baking such a huge cake is quite a commitment, one that I usually avoid if there are not many people in the house to eat it, but this was my chance, so on the menu it went.

Also…. look at it!

Also on the menu were butter cake cookies (if you’ve never tried them, oh man, do you have to!), almond cloud cookies, no-bake mint chocolate bars, Russian korzinki lemon tarts, apple pie, pecan pie, walnut brownies, raspberry brownies, gluten-free lemon blueberry cakes, a white layer cake, and a dark, fudgy chocolate cake (because the white one wanted company.) As you can see, the list ran away from me a bit.

The next step was alerting the community. At this point, I’ll admit that I’m not the best at marketing. Since I live a bit far from the campus, I made the assumption that no one would drive down. So my target clients was the neighbourhood. I drew up some signs and put it up at the post office, general store, and the local library. I also put up signs on our front yard for those driving by. What I should have done was create an event on Facebook and flooded the social media with enticing pictures of baked goodies. In my case, the only people who knew were my friends (the ones who happened to message me during the week). The next three days were so consumed with baking that I did not have the time or energy to stop and think about marketing. I’m so sure I lost a lot of customers there.

Tuesday evening, I sat down to finalise the recipes and figure out the shopping list. List #2! I’m a little old school and wanted to write everything down, to avoid last minute scrambling online for recipes or conversion rates. I also had to display the ingredients and allergens at the time of sale, so the writing down really helped. On the last day, I just had to copy from my notebook. Each recipe also had the time I took to bake/make them. This helped when it came to pricing the dishes.

The next morning, I set out to shop for all the ingredients and it was such a disaster. I got lost in West Lebanon trying to find BJ’s, went around three different parking lots before finally finding the place. Now, I’ve never been in a BJ’s before and was surprised at its size. I know they advertise as the wholesale shop, but I was still taken aback. As it is, I hate shopping alone. I’m not sure why, but it intimidates me too much. Being surrounded by these giant racks scared the crap out of me. To make the struggle worse, I got lost a couple of time in there. Sometimes I really wonder who allowed me to be an adult.

I checked most of the ingredients off my list and headed out to Michael’s to pick up all the fun wrapping accessories and also cardstock to make boxes. I knew it would be difficult (not to mention expensive) to get the boxes in the size I wanted and in the quantity I wanted. To be honest, I was a bit wonky on these numbers because I couldn’t accurately guess how many customers I would have or in what combination they would pick up goodies. I just went for a high enough number and considered it an investment for the future. They had a plethora of colours and I picked up two of each (as it takes two to make a box), but the ones I picked weren’t remotely as cool as the one Ni picked up when I sent him on an errand run. Super saver that he is, he had some coupons at Joann and got some funky design for less than 30 cents! 30 friggin cents! I honestly don’t know why I even bother going shopping alone.

Thursday and Friday were the big baking days, so that evening I baked only the cookies and prepared the pie crusts. I settled in to make the boxes and you should’ve seen me on the diwan, half covered by a duvet (because apparently no one told Etna that it is still Fall), my cardstocks to one side and my trusty scissors and tape on the other. I also picked up some colourful tag to put my brand name and contact information and when I got bored of making boxes, I wrote some of those cards.

The next day before anything else, I took out all the cold ingredients (except heavy cream) as they all needed to come up to room temperature. This is the best way to ensure that all the ingredients blend well with each other. I started with the smaller ones like brownies and tarts and planned to keep the big ticket items for the next day. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t mix any ingredients, so I went dish by dish. This cost me a lot of time and a whole lot of back pain. I was in the kitchen for 12 + hours and by 1 am, my body was ready to call it quits. 

At the end of the day, I still had to make the two big cakes, shrewsbury biscuits (which I added to the menu,) walnut brownies, lemon curd, and the frosting for the lemon blueberry cupcakes. I was almost sure that I wouldn’t be able to make it all. I woke up all in a panic at 6 something and went back to the kitchen to start with the white layer cake. Throughout the day, I had to keep taking breaks to rest my back as it just got worse by the hour. It was hell, but by 8.30 pm, I had done it! Frosting, piping, cleaning the kitchen. Everything. I was a bit skeptical and kept checking my 100 lists to see if I had missed out anything, but all checked out. All I had left to do was join my friends for a drink and a game of cards.

Or so I thought until I remembered pricing. At 3.30 am. With me half asleep and mumbling, Ni added the figures. The ingredients of each dish was listed out against the market price of the ingredient. We then determined the percentage of usage and hence, the cost. To this we added labour charges based on how much time I spent on each dish, distributed the cost of packing materials and voila, we had the pricing.

Well, if I’m being honest, Ni had it.

The morning of the sale, each one of us picked up a table to set up outside and promptly ran back into the house as it was cold as hell. I knew it was going into the negatives that morning, but I was still unprepared for the biting cold. In that second I knew the mistake that I had made. Hardly anyone wanted to get out of bed on such a cold day, let alone out of their house. Not only that, I was putting myself in an uncomfortable position for the next 5 hours. I’m from Madras, where the temperatures do not go below 25C. Staying in negative temperature for 5 hours straight is how my enemies can torture me for information. Thankfully, I have darling friends and a handsome redhead who braved the cold with me.

At the end of 5 hours, I hadn’t sold any of the big ticket items, but a few people stopped by on their way to the football game to pick up goodies and have a quick chat. Most of the stuff got sold mainly because of the efforts of my friends, who called and had their friends order over the phone. All in all, I didn’t break even, but I learnt a heck lot about organising bake sales and even baking for a big order. And at the end of it, I was left with two damn delicious cakes, one of which my friends and I were too tempted to resist and ended up pooling in cash to buy. The other we cut yesterday, because.. you know.. it would get wasted otherwise.

That’s the last thing I should’ve done. Had a plan to give away whatever I couldn’t sell. By the time, I could really think of something, it seemed too late. So I started giving away desserts in the name of marketing. Here’s hoping that they all remember me when their mid-exam craving hit.