The bake sale was a big success!! I sold every item except one little bag of french macarons and actually turned a bit of a profit! I had been expecting to just break even because I spent a good amount investing in supplies that I'll be using over and over, but a PROFIT! Yaaaay!!! It was really fun and I got a lot of good responses from the people who bought my product.
Getting ready for the sale was really fun but extremely exhausting. I baked most of the day Sunday and all day Monday. My back was killing me and my kitchen was covered in a layer of flour, but I loved it.
I started with the macarons because I was most nervous about them. Everyone says how tricky they can be. Since I was making mini cookies, I had to do about a bajillion of them. My wrist was killing me after all that piping! About half of them turned out messed up because they burst open instead of having that gorgeous smooth top. But the half that turned out good looked beautiful. My boyfriend wasn't too bummed about eating the messups either :).
I filled them with raspberry jam and they were quite tasty!
I did the madeleines next and those were really fun, and I think they might have been my favorite. I got a really great pan from Amazon.
This pan... It worked super well and I had no stick problems at all! I did butter and flour it first, but the cookies popped right out and looked amazing. They also tasted SO GOOD. I browned the butter for the recipe and it really added another layer of flavor. Browned butter is the best thing in the universe, if you ask me. After they were all done, I lined them up on parchment paper and sprinkled on the powdered sugar. Oh and one thing I forgot to do was put in red food coloring. I totally meant to do that, and it just flew out of my brain. Oh well.
I made the chocolate dipped strawberries last because I learned that after a bit they start to leak strawberry juice through the chocolate and that's gross. A lady at work told me about a good vegan dark chocolate, so I used that to do the dipping. I made packages of four that included one plain, one dipped in crushed pecans, one dipped in pearl sprinkles, and one dipped in red sugar. I was pretty impressed with how they turned out!
I also made marshmallow, but didn't realize it has to dry out overnight, so I didn't get a chance to dip them in chocolate and package them in time for the sale.
I really wanted all of the packaging to be gifty and I was hoping to target guys who needed last minute Valentine's Day presents for their wives / girlfriends. Everything turned out exactly how I wanted.
I ended up selling the chocolate strawberries for $6, the madeleines for $4 and the french macarons for $3.
All in all, it was a ton of work, but also a ton of fun! My next step is to get some of this stuff up on Etsy with the pictures that I took. I'd also like to start sketching logos so that I can get my business cards going. I'm super stoked to keep this momentum going!!
