Kelly the Culinarian: Food flash: Great American Bake Sale

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Food flash: Great American Bake Sale

More than 12.4 million American children will get tucked into bed and try to sleep with an empty tummy tonight. I was approach by a public relations person at this organization to help share a little bit of their message. You've probably seen commercials for the Great American Bake Sale on Food Network featuring my favorite celebrity chef, Rachael Ray. Hey, if Rachael Ray is pushing it, I'm behind it ...

But seriously, this is a great cause. We've all attended or organized a bake sale at some point in our lives to fund everything from a band trip to sewing up the church's deficit. This Share Our Strength-backed event follows the same premise. You get your friends together and whip up some baked goods, then tell everyone you know to come on by and pick up their favorite sweet treats. At the end of the day, you gather up everything you made and donate it to Share
Our Strength, which uses the money to combat childhood hunger.

Volunteers can organize an event in your community any time that's convenient for you. Through this effort, about 1 millions volunteers have raised $3 million since 2003, according to a news release.

Out here in Tucson, I caught up with Melissa Markel, a working grandmother who organized a bake sale June 30 at her church.
"I just happened to find the national bake sale web site and I have grandchildren and I hate to think they would ever go hungry so I thought I would like to help someone else’s grandchildren to have food," Markel said. "Basically I contacted some of the people in my church and also have some family who live here in Tucson and asked them to help."
Markel said she made cookies, cake, doughnuts, baked lemon tart, quiche, cupcakes and muffins, mostly from mixes. She said she planned for about a month and baked for two evenings beforehand.
"I just used cake mixes and stuff like that since I work," Markel said. "I wanted it to be fresh. I had some people bringing things in like cookies warm."
She said the planning was quite simple and she raised about $100. Markel said she would try it again perhaps next spring.
"I’d schedule it when it was a bit cooler outside and try to get more public notice out there, maybe put an ad in the paper," Markel said.
So now that you know a little bit about he organization, I hope you'll choose to host your own bake sale to help feed hungry babies that could be just down your street. In addition to helping out a great cause, it would be a fun way to spend time with your neighbors or a social group. The reason why so many schools and organizations hold bake sale fundraisers is that they're easy, fun and inexpensive. Most newspapers have a community calendar and there's always your church's newsletter, craigslist or your children's PTA groups that can help you with publicity. This is also the kind of feel-good stories that smaller newspapers love. When you're ready to host an event, you can register your bake sale here.

8 comments:

Retno Prihadana said...

A great way to collect money for helping children.

Charlotte Hume said...

Cake sales for charity are popular here in the UK as well. Who doesnt like buying cakes??

FH said...

Good idea for a great cause!:)

East Meets West Kitchen said...

Yummy bakes for a good cause - a perfect combination! :)

Nora B. said...

Hi Kelly,
Thanks for dropping by my blog. It's great that you are highlighting this. If we have such an event in Sydney, I would definitely be part of it.

The closest to a bake sale we had was the "Australia's Biggest Morning Tea" and I participated in a cake auction. You can read more about it here:
http://lifesmorgasbord.blogspot.com/2007/05/australias-biggest-morning-tea-charity.html

Have a good weekend ahead!

Joy said...

Sounds like heaven to me! My problem is once I start eating yummy baked stuff, I won't be able to stop.

joy
The Goddess In You

backStreetGluttons said...

a great worthy cause this kind of sale. Now U made us realize to be on the lookout for such charitable things here ( we think there is , but somehow never bothered...)

Rasa Malaysia said...

It's really great that you are doing such good deeds for charity. I bow down to you. :)