Christmas Bakesale

After some encouragement from the ladies at work, I decided to have a Christmas bakesale. Deon bought me a Martha Stewart Holiday Baking magazine in Inuvik, and there were plenty of ideas that I thought might be interesting to try. Over the last week, I baked a little bit each night, and stuck much of it in the freezer to thaw out the day before the bake sale. The list of baked goods for sale was as follows:


Green Christmas Tree Spritz Cookies from my Wilton cookie press... I made 160 of these, and they didn't end up being a big seller at $5/20 cookies. The remainder might end up being gifts for peoples' stockings at work.


Chocolate Sandwich Cookies with buttercream filling of bright colours. I made 4 rows of 8 cookies each, and these were priced at $8/pack... All of them sold. I tried one sampler and it was delicious!


Rice Krispie Stockings topped with some buttercream accents in various colours. Deon made 55 of these for me to decorate, and they sold like hotcakes. Some people bought 15-20 at a time. They were priced at $1/piece.


Quasi-Gingerbread and Sugar Cookies topped with fondant (and a few topped with buttercream). The gingerbread cookie recipe was one I found on Kraft's website, and it is much simpler than gingerbread, and doesn't take those hard-to-find ingredients like molasses, etc. Instead, all you need is some butterscotch Jello pudding mix, and a few spices like ginger and cinnamon. These were priced at $0.75/each or $8/dozen.


Candy Cane Cookies- these were a nightmare to make, and the dough kept breaking apart when I was trying to twist it together. Then, the bottoms of them browned extremely quickly, while the rest of them stayed soft. However, according to my taste tester, they turned out well, with their hint-of-mint flavour. These babies were $2/piece, and all of the unbroken ones sold. (You can also see the baggies of Spritz cookies in the picture, and I also had mini cookies in a cone on the right hand side of the picture, which were made from the leftover candy cane dough that just wouldn't form into candy canes.


Cakes- snowman and Christmas tree shaped, made out of rainbow bits cake mix, and decorated with buttercream icing. These were priced at $20 each, or 2/$35. I made 8 of these for the sale. Most people bought 2 at a time, and all that remains is a lonely Christmas tree, which I'll share with the office staff.


Gingerbread men with buttercream decor... these were $1/piece, and sold right away. There were only 13 in total, since they are a pain to cut out and decorate!

All in all, the sale was okay. Not as many customers showed up as I'd hoped for but there was a competing bake sale at the same time. However, the customers that did show up bought plenty of items, and there is not much that remains.

Profits were around $130... a little pocket change for vacation!