I thought there was another thread about this, but I couldn’t find it. We have a bake sale fundraiser on Saturday and I want to maximize my baking. What are the best sellers? I have a ton of muffin pans, but that sounds boring to me. Cupcakes are good, but hard to wrap without ruining the frosting. Others will be doing chocolate chip cookies and brownies.
Put rice krispie treats in the muffin pans. Easier to pack in baggies when firm.
People buy real muffins. Make them smaller and put the calorie count on them–will make people feel virtuous for not eating 19,000 calories in one serving.
Everyone bring pie.
I’m going to second rice krispie treats. If you wanna get fancy, use cocoa krispies, add a scant shot of chocolate syrup to the melting marshmallows and mix in 3/4 cup of dried cherries for Black Forest Krispie Treats. You can charge way more for them that way. 
Neatness sells, things without goopy frosting and harsh dyes that don’t fall apart when you eat them. I like to make a couple pans of plain brownies, let cool and use a small biscuit cutter to punch out circles that fit a muffin pan. Place a brownie circle in a cupcake wrapper, pipe a yummy frosting on top but not all the way to the edge, another brownie circle on top and shake powdered sugar or do a decorative plop of frosting on top. Easy to eat, easy to bag in sandwich baggies for individual sale, tastes sorta like a homemade suzy-q.
Q T, thank you for the Black Forest upgrade!!!
Cake balls are huge here. I have not made them but have a general idea of how it is done.
A cake is baked. The warmish cake is broken up and mixed with frosting. This is scooped into heaps of about 2-3-4 tablespoon sized balls. The cake ball is then rolled in frosting again and decorated with things like crushed peppermints, sprinkles, etc. There is a lot of chocolate/ chocolate, and chocolate/vanilla, ect., combos. They are very gooey and fudgey inside.
They usually sell for 3 for a dollar.
I’ve never even heard of this. Sounds great. This is how bakeries make rum balls. All the cake and frosting scraps are mooshed in the mixer together with melted chocolate and rum flavoring, then rolled in chocolate sprinkles.
Gooey, melty, home-made looking things kind of turn me off. I’ve made beautiful cakes and pies, but they didn’t sell well because people like to take a little of this, a little of that. So, small, pretty, and neat is good. Lemon squares nestled in cupcake papers sell well, anything chocolate, and really any kind of cookie. There are seldom ever any leftover cookies.
I find that fudge is often sadly overlooked at bake sales. I love fudge, especially non-traditional flavors. I recently made a very easy butter pecan fudge that was delicious.
Google Bakerella and “cake pops”, she puts them on a stick, dips it in melted chocolate and decorates them.
Wow. I need to go to more bake sales.
Back in the day when my big brother was in school and had various functions that held bake sales, I got tagged into doing the cooking for it. Practice my Mom called it =)
Hm, cheesecake brownies were always popular. I used about double the cheesecake mixture that the recipe called for, I liked it heavy on the cheesecake =) This recipe seems about as heavy on cheesecake as I like them =)
Lemon bars. Good tart lemon bars.
Thumbprint cookies, I used almond extract instead of vanilla, and blackberry jam.
classic shortbread. I had an old shortbread mold that pressed a wedge pattern on the circle, you cut it along the wedge lines and bake. I need to rummage around and find it, all I can see in my kitchen right now is a standing cat dressed in colonial womens clothing that is theoretically a gingerbread mold.
Gingerbread men, like in Shrek. They are a blast to decorate. I used to put them in football jerseys with the popular players numbers for the football bake sales.
I have always heard that brown things don’t sell as well as white or pastel things. Everybody loves chocolate, but put some icing on it to make it look good.
Here’s a quick and easy treat: Candy-coated pretzel rods.
Get large pretzel rods (not sticks) and coat about half way with melted white chocolate (just melt the white chocolate in a bowl and then use a spoon to coat the pretzel rods). You want to make sure you have plain pretzel at the bottom for a handle.
While the chocolate is still melty, roll or sprinkle the rods with colored sugar, tinted coconut, mini M&M’s, mini chocolate chips etc.
Let the topping harden and wrap in clear plastic. Sell for $0.25 each. These were a big hit for birthday parties, too.
Two quick and easy ones for ya.
Easy Pretzel Turtles: find some square pretzels (this is the hardest part of the recipe). Lay them flat on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Put a Rolo candy on top of each one. Put in the oven for 4 minutes at 250 degrees, just long enough to soften the Rolo. While still warm, press a pecan half onto each Rolo to smush it. Allow to cool, and you’re done. I’d sell 'em in little bags, because eating them singly isn’t possible.
Special K Bars: Put 1 cup corn syrup and 1 cup sugar in a saucepan. Put on high heat and stir until the granulated sugar dissolves and the mixture bubbles a bit. Take off the heat and add 1 cup of peanut butter. Stir to dissolve, there’s plenty of heat in there. When it’s nice and smooth, add 6 cups of Special K cereal and stir to coat. Dump this mixture onto a cookie sheet (you can line it if you want, but don’t use wax paper, it’ll stick) and spread to a uniform thickness. Let it cool. Then, melt an 11 oz bag of chocolate chips and an 11 oz bag of butterscotch chips together in the microwave, stirring to mix. Spread the chocolate on top of your Special K slab. When everything has cooled, cut into individual bars; I find it easiest to chill the stuff in the fridge, then pop the whole slab out of the pan before cutting. Ta da! Yummier than a candy bar.
Okay, we made:
Pretzel Turtles
Rice Krispie Treats
Brownies
Chocolate cupcakes and speckled cupcakes
Something very similar to Special K bars but with colored mini marshmallows (next time, I’ll use the Special K)
Lemon Bars
Triple chocolate chunk chocolate cookies
They’d better sell tomorrow.
Thanks for all the ideas! If I had more time, I’d have tried more of the suggestions.
But I encourage you to to take theleap… incorporate your Boxed Brownie mix into a “cookie fluff” of mixed Room Temperature Butter, eggs (or yolks), vanilla, and Baking powder and soda cookie base with coarsely chopped walnuts and dark chocolate morsels… I’m not sure of the proportions, but you should only bake it 8-10 minutes.
I bet the pretzel turtles would be awesome on those crackers that are pretzel on one side and kind of Ritz-like on the other. Sounds like the ultimate PMS food to me. I may have to experiment.
Small is great. Most people aren’t going to want to buy a whole cake or pie, but might want a single slice. Or wrap up three or four cookies in one treat bag.
I’ll buy a SMALL piece of fudge, because I love fudge. However, I can’t eat much of it, and it doesn’t keep well. So I never make it at home, but if I can buy a small piece, it’s likely that I’ll do it. I won’t buy a whole pan of it, though.
Sounds great! If you ever get a chance try those dipped pretzel rods- they end up looking so pretty with the bright colors against the white chocolate- eye catching and easy to eat- they always sell out!
One of my SIL’s does something similar with regular pretzels, a Kiss, and an M&M.