baking for hope

Julie and I have been baking like crazy! We held an extremely successful bake sale in our department last Monday, and our homemade all-natural puppy treats were a huge success! So much so that we're now taking special orders! We've made three deliveries so far this week!

Julie and I spent the entire weekend prior to the bake sale baking. We made most of the goodies on our own and then met for a few hours on Sunday to make the dog treats and do all of the packaging together. Julie's dog, Ava, came over, so the puppies had a blast running amok together in the snow. Every few minutes we'd catch them both staring into the house wondering where all of the wonderful peanut butter smells were coming from. Then one would pounce on the other, and they'd both race back though the yard, chasing and wrestling one another.

We used bone, paw-print and dog house shaped cookie cutters to make the dog treats and then packaged them in either cellophane bags or larger colorful poop bags (depending on the size of the order). Julie was in charge of packaging and found some adorable bone print ribbon. She did such a great job! We've decided that if our PhDs don't work out, we can always open up a doggy bakery...

With our combined efforts over a two day period, Julie and I made:

• Pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting
• Banana bread with chocolate chips
• Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting
• Brownies with mint icing
• Raspberry flavored jello cake
• Peanut butter dog treats

The bake sale itself was a huge success! We had customers before we even finished setting out the goodies! Luckily, and quite coincidentally, there was a faculty meeting that afternoon so every single faculty member in the department was in the building. Nearly everyone stopped by to support us! Because of the meeting we had a much better turn out than we could have possibly expected. I couldn't believe that every single cupcake, piece of bread, slice of cake, and package of dog treats were purchased! We made nearly $300 and it far exceeded our expectations.

The outpouring of support from our (perhaps sugar addicted) department was truly inspirational!