Cheating at ‘school’ cup cake decorations

If your children have started school then it won’t be too long before the inevitable begging letters begin. Most parents will  know what I mean. ‘please could you consider purchasing tickets to our bazaar or light opera’ etc. ‘Please could you provide us with some almost new toys or gifts that we can sell to raise money for the schools newly planned international airport ’. It sometimes seems like my children’s local school gets more cash handouts than most charity organisations. Don’t misunderstand me; I am all for teachers being paid more for the amazing job that they do. If COVID lockdown has taught me anything, it is that my children need to be removed from the family home for several hours each weekday and taught by trained professionals. My attempts to do some sort of meaningful ‘home-schooling’ in between Cake Path Orders merely resulted in most of the children’s textbooks being covered in flour & food colouring.

I am all for subsidising the ‘taxpayer dollar’ with some additional funds. My husband has an issue with the fact that the pleas for money always come with a thinly veiled disguise (like the school fete or whatever). He says that he would much prefer a system where schools just admit that they are all private and set appropriate levels of term time fee’s (equivalent to whatever he would burn through at the average school fete or quiz night). This way he says everyone would be happy. The school would get more of our money and he wouldn’t be forced to attend functions which he has neither the time nor the inclination to be bothered with. It is at this point that I gently point out that it’s always me who ends up attending these things rather than him. But I can see his point I suppose.

Until that wonderful day, parents are still often asked (at the last minute it seems) to provide something for a bake sale or whatever & you have to somehow magic up something vaguely saleable.

So my top tip for busy parents is this. Do not spend ages preparing cake mixture carefully baking up individual cup cakes for decoration. It is a waste of time when most of them will be sold for a pittance and then consigned quickly to the bin. No. I have found that the best course of action is to purchase a big tray of naked plain cup-cakes from the local budget supermarket & then mix up some simple coloured butter cream. Piped buttercream looks amazing and your ‘el cheapo’ cup cakes will suddenly look gorgeous. My mother in law has a piping bag which she has used for years and which must be laboriously washed out following every use.

Waste of time people!

Just order some disposable plastic piping bags from Amazon and make more time for yourself to enjoy the finer things in life (like binging that new show on amazon prime whilst your husband is out with the kids).

Voila, the school is happy and can continue to stay open for another month and you have saved yourself about two hours of frantic baking whilst keeping your blood pressure at a reasonably normal level. All that remains is to send your completed decorated masterpieces to the school and reap the harvest of approving nods from the teaching faculty. They won’t be hassling you for at least another couple of weeks.

Now, where did I put that glass of Prosecco?