Monday, July 13, 2009

Selling baked goods

So I wanted some money, so I decided that I would bake a TON of cookies, cupcakes, and chocolates. And then I would go sell them to neighbors, door-to-door.

Here are the snickerdoodles. The recipe is here. (I substituted the butter with vegetable shortening, and the eggs with 2 tablespoons water+1 tablespoon oil+2 teaspoons baking powder per egg)

Here are the chocolate-chocolate chip cookies from Veganomicon, without the walnuts.

Although these look like oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies, they're actually oatmeal-raisin. Also from Veganomicon.

All of the cookies were put in cute little boxes, all in mixes of thirteen. 

Here's a box for the cupcakes, the brown ones are chocolate, and the pink ones are vanilla (both from "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World") this is the only box I had left, the rest of the cupcakes had to deal with paper plates and plastic wrap... There's two extra snickerdoodles in there as well.

Here are the truffles. They came in assorted flavors, also in cute little boxes. I think there was strawberry, raspberry, coffee, orange, peanut butter, mint, almond, and coconut chocolates.
I used this recipe, sort of. Be sure not to use the chocolate they call for, it isn't vegan. Instead I used their semi-sweet chocolate chips, and some unsweetened baking squares. And then for the butter I used shortening, and for the cream, light coconut milk. And instead of liqueurs, I used extracts mostly. I guess I hardly used that recipe. It was more like a basic idea.

Here are the plates of chocolates.


And I also had some individual chocolates. I used some green and red clear plastic wrapping "paper" and some ribbons.

So to make this, it took over an entire day. Then the next day I went door-to-door selling them. I was out for two hours doing this. With hardly any luck. I only sold to four people. Although two of them tipped, which was nice. Then the next day I tried again, I only did it for half an hour though, since it went so bad the day before. With no luck for that day. So after over an entire day of cooking, and two and a half hours of trying to sell them, I only got $16. At least I have a bunch of sweets I can eat?
Well, actually, a friend of mine took a large basket full of sweets and took them to his work where he put it on a table with prices on them, so that if people would like, they can buy some. Hopefully that will work out much better than door-to-door did... I'll tell you how that goes.

I don't think I'll be doing this again.
But I have another idea, slightly similar, instead of door-to-door, I'm thinking a lemonade stand sort of thing, maybe with a few cookies, and then I'd have my blender out there, so I could make smoothies and frappes. And probably some lemonade too. Sounds good to me.

3 comments:

lynelle said...

awesome work! delicious food! you just need a better marketing plan. trial and error... you'll find a way!

Jen Hernandez said...

Wow! How brave of you to go soliciting door-to-door. Too bad not many got to experience your cookies.
Just stumbled on your blog tonight and enjoyed it greatly! In fact, I went back and read all of your old posts.
My boyfriend and I have been vegans for a long time. Maybe you'd like to read our online comic. I have a couple vegan recipes somewhere in there.
www.buttersword.com

Great blog! Keep up the good work!

Jamie said...

Thank you!
I'll be sure to read it. :3