After spending the past fews days making/wrapping cake pops, baking pecan caramel brownies and prepping three batches of scone dough (cranberry orange, ginger almond and blueberry lemon), I got up at 3:30 yesterday morning and baked a Cafe Beaujolais coffee cake and the 24 scones so they would be fresh for delivery at 6:30 AM.
Then I worked at the food booth for 5 hours, watching people pick up the clear-clam packaged items, look at the price and put them back....because LAST YEAR they had priced cookies and baked goods at $.75 cents, whole pies at $5 and whole cakes at $8. And while my contributions weren't that fancy, they were like little jewels in a sea of mediocre baked goods.
This year, they changed the price of pies to $10 and whole cakes to $20, but the majority of baked goods were still $1. I had to protest a bit to get mine priced higher.
And what do you think sold out first?? The few whole cakes and pies...the very thing I was told NOT to bake. Let's see what else: along with my brownies made with whole pecans and my own caramel sauce were four other brownie donations...all of which came from a box. I know this. I've baked enough boxed brownies to know. So mine were proportionally about 5 times more expensive to prepare. The coffee cake was originally priced at $3 for 3" squares but was dropped to $1 to get it to move. The cake pops (lemon, strawberry and chocolate) were wrapped in batched of three and marked $4. This town has 3 Starbucks and they sell cake pops for $2 a piece so our price wasn't that off. However, mine didn't move until they were marked down to $2 for 3 pops.
Next year I'll just donate the cash that I'd spend on ingredients and skip the 3:30 AM bakeoff.
[CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO SEE FULL IMAGE]
Then I worked at the food booth for 5 hours, watching people pick up the clear-clam packaged items, look at the price and put them back....because LAST YEAR they had priced cookies and baked goods at $.75 cents, whole pies at $5 and whole cakes at $8. And while my contributions weren't that fancy, they were like little jewels in a sea of mediocre baked goods.
This year, they changed the price of pies to $10 and whole cakes to $20, but the majority of baked goods were still $1. I had to protest a bit to get mine priced higher.
And what do you think sold out first?? The few whole cakes and pies...the very thing I was told NOT to bake. Let's see what else: along with my brownies made with whole pecans and my own caramel sauce were four other brownie donations...all of which came from a box. I know this. I've baked enough boxed brownies to know. So mine were proportionally about 5 times more expensive to prepare. The coffee cake was originally priced at $3 for 3" squares but was dropped to $1 to get it to move. The cake pops (lemon, strawberry and chocolate) were wrapped in batched of three and marked $4. This town has 3 Starbucks and they sell cake pops for $2 a piece so our price wasn't that off. However, mine didn't move until they were marked down to $2 for 3 pops.
Next year I'll just donate the cash that I'd spend on ingredients and skip the 3:30 AM bakeoff.
[CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO SEE FULL IMAGE]
