Cake stall madness

Sam’s school has a fundraising cake stall every friday, and each year group takes it turn to provide the cakes and manpower.

Volunteering your services behind the stall is not for faint-hearted, as come 3:30pm a swarm of children buzz around the baked goods crazed with hunger jostling to get their mitts on the best cakes.

There’s also the added competition of which year group will raise the most dosh!

Being the relative newbies, the Reception Year mums baked a LOT of cakes. The highlights were miniature cupcakes with swirly icing and sprinkles, fairy cakes bejewelled with fruit pastilles and a sticky banana loaf with cream cheese frosting. I’m afraid I couldn’t take any photos due to the total chaos – I would have been knocked down if I’d attempted it!

For my contribution I was in ultra thrift mode. I had a batch of 20 cupcakes in my freezer – they were the first set of red velvet cupcakes I made for Sam’s birthday that failed to actually turn red. I also had some surplus cream cheese frosting from the same baking sesh.

Both cakes and icing froze beautifully – I did a quality control test to make sure they didn’t have that weird frozen flavour that sometimes ruins things. Having a batch of cakes in the freezer is such a good plan, not only can it buy you some time for providing a school cake stall or afternoon tea, but they can be used for a rainy day cake decorating session with the kids when attention spans are short.

To adorn my cakes I had a play with the hamper of decorations that Dr Oetker kindly sent me.

The wafer daisies add a simple pastel flourish when perched on a piped pile of frosting.

The pouch of pink designer icing comes with a pack of four nozzles that you can screw on depending on what effect you’re going for. I used the star shape to pipe little rosettes.

These bags of icing are a great idea – quicker and less messy than having to make up your own and absolutely ideal for using with children.

The cakes flew off the stall – we made a marvellous £181 for the school!