Tips for Bake Sale Desserts

Tips for Bake Sale Desserts:
A Conversation with Sally Sampson

1. What makes the perfect bake sale recipe?
Easy to prepare, easy to divide and easy to transport.

2. What are your tips for transporting and displaying this precious cargo? Which of your recipes are easy to transport?
Keep shoeboxes (kids and adult sizes), wax paper and toothpicks on hand. They're all easy to transport, but I would recommend icing cakes on the spot if you are travelling any distance.

3. What do you do when it is 9 P.M. And your child tells you he or she needs to take some 'goodies' for the school fundraiser in the morning?
Turn the oven on and take frozen dough out of the freezer. If you have school age children and even if you don't, you should have several logs of frozen cookie dough on hand. All the time.

4. What are some of the essential ingredients you should keep in your pantry, refrigerator and freezer?
Unsalted butter. White and brown sugar. All purpose flour. Vanilla extract, baking soda, kosher salt. Frozen nuts. Chocolate Chips. Cocoa powder.

5. What essential equipment do you recommend for baking?
A good cookie sheet, bundt pan, 8 x 8 inch and 9 x 13 inch pan.

6. What else can you take to a bake sale besides the traditional cookies, cupcakes, and brownies?
Lemonade and fruit punch.

7. What do children learn from bake sales?
Most importantly they learn to contribute to others who have some kind of need, whether it be by raising money to buy books or to build a new hospital wing. On a lighter note, they learn math skills by dividing cakes and bars into portions and by giving change.

8. How do bake sales create a sense of community? Why are bake sales so quintessentially American?
By working on a shared goal, bake sales bring people together. The spirit of volunteerism is uniquely American.

9. What did you learn visiting bake sales across the country?
A bake sale is a bake sale is a bake sale.

Buy the Book!

The Bake Sale Cookbook:
Quintessential American Desserts
By Sally Sampson
Fireside Books/A Simon & Schuster, May 2000
Paperback, $15.00
ISBN: 0-684-86229-8
Recipe reprinted by permission.