Bake Sale!!

Posted: September 30, 2010 | Author: Alyssa | Filed under: Alyssa | 2 Comments »

Do you ever feel like you never stop working? For some reason, moving to a new school has made me something of a joiner.  I have already volunteered for a couple committees and I am one of the faculty sponsors of the GSA on campus.  While all this joining means less time in my personal life, it also means a lot of fun opportunity like helping to set up a bake sale in an effort to raise funds for equipment to make the school’s campus a safer place for the GLBTQ community.  Luckily the students did most of the work, I just baked a couple things and allowed some of the boarding students to come bake in my apartment.  The kids had it in their head that they wanted to do a rainbow cake, which actually turned out pretty awesome.  I wish had been able to get pictures, but it didn’t work out.

I fully expected to watch the my entire kitchen become a war zone of cake batter, food coloring, and who knows what else, but I was very impressed by their ‘clean as you go method’ because no matter how long I have been cooking, I will never be able to master what two 17 year olds accomplished.  My kitchen was actually cleaner when they were done with it…how the hell does that happen? *Mom if you are reading this please refrain from any comments about how messy it must have been to begin with, because I had just cleaned it that morning. 

After they had made the cake batter they just separated it into different bowls and then died each section with food dye.  Then just layer each color on top of the previous one and bake like normal.  When it first came out of the oven it was sort of a purplish brown color, but when you cut into it you could see all the individual colors.  I have done this with cupcakes before but never a whole cake so it was fun to see. 

For the bake sale, I made fudge because I have a friend who has to be gluten free and I figured bake sales have to be like hell for her.  Fudge is gluten free and completely delicious, so how could that be a bad idea?  Answer: it is not the idea that was bad, it was the execution. Sad face.

I apparently did not cook the fudge enough because after twelve hours in the fridge it had not set so much as gelatinized (also, I’m pretty sure I just made that word up).  When a recipe calls for soft ball stage, make sure you get an accurate temperature reading because while the fudge still tasted delicious (yeah, I ate it, so what, you wanna fight about it?)  it could not hold its shape for more than about 45 second and oddly enough no one wants to buy ‘fudge soup’…even for fifty cents.  Luckily I still had some other stuff to contribute to the bake sale, but you’ll have to wait to read about that in my next post entitled Bake Sale the Sequel: Brownies, Mice and Monkeys. 

I know, you are on the edge of your seat already….