Parent life / Before the icing has set
Label the Lid Too, Says Everyone Who Has Lost One
A parent new to British school bake sales asked Mumsnet how they work. The advice covered pricing, packaging and nuts, and one reply was firm about the lid.
In October 2024 a parent posted on Mumsnet: her child's school was having a bake sale, she had never been to one, and she wasn't British. Do people bake whole cakes or tray bakes? Will the container come back? How does the pricing work? She was probably overthinking it, she wrote, but she wanted to help the school, and didn't want to look clueless in front of the other mums.
The replies came quickly. Label the box with what it is and your name, one said, "(both lid and box in my experience)," then ask for the container back afterward.
Both lid and box. In my experience. Somewhere there is a parent who got the box back and not the lid, and that parent now replies to every bake-sale question on the internet.
Another reply was less hopeful: at their child's school, bake sales were about 90 percent shop-bought, left in the packet, and you would not see the container again, so use something disposable. Prices ran from 50p for a basic fairy cake to £1.50 for cookies or fancier things. A third gave the essential warning, with a typo that improves it: avoid nuts, because "most primary schools are nit free."
I have never been to a school that was nit free. I have been to several that hoped to be.
Not everyone thinks you should bake at all. In a separate 2023 thread a parent asked for an easy recipe for a primary school bake sale, and a reply asked whether the school really wanted homemade, because in that commenter's view shop-bought sells much better. The parent said yes, the school had asked for homemade. Others offered chocolate crispy cakes, fudge cut into cubes, and the observation that simple sells best.
Our school asked for homemade last spring. My wife made lemon bars in the good glass dish with the blue lid. The middle one labeled it, in permanent marker, with our last name, on the box. Not the lid.
The dish came back two weeks later, via the lost and found, with a lid that is green and does not fit. Our blue lid is still out there. Somewhere a family has a dish with a blue lid that fits it perfectly, and I hope they are enjoying it.
The youngest has now labeled every lid in the house.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- School bake sale, help! — public parent discussion mumsnet.com
- School bake sale — recipe request and replies mumsnet.com
- Westfield Primary: Early Years Easter Fundraiser westfieldprimary.co.uk