Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Fake Bakers

The Globe and Mail has an article about people who try to pass off bakery goods as their own at parties and school bake sales.

I think times have changed quite a bit since I was in school. The most "baked" item likely to show up on the fund raising table would be rice krispie treats. If the parent supplying them was really into it, there might be some jimmies on top. Otherwise, it was generally accepted that you went to one of the two excellent bakeries in the neighbourhood, and bought some kichels or mandel brot. That had the added bonus of being kosher which the marshmallow treats were not (gelatin). So everyone was happy. No one I knew had home-baked sweets in the 60's and 70's-unless their grandmother lived with them. My grannies weren't really bakers. My father's mother made her own pickled herring in wine, but you couldn't make use of that at a bake sale.

Seriously though, would you even bother to try and disguise bakery purchased sweets? What ever happened to , "Hey, look-I splurged on bakery items!" I always though homemade stuff looked like you were a cheapskate.

Really, isn't it enough to attack women for formula feeding, how they discipline their children, how they clean, and whether they work outside of the home? What, now baking skills are fair game? Really, if you have friends putting enough pressure on you that it seems normal to sit in your car dumping store-bought brownies onto a paper plate, and decorating them with squeeze frosting...well, frankly you need new friends.

I had to laugh at the advice for re-warming a pie and making indentations with the back of a spoon to make it look homemade.

2 comments:

iasa said...

At my kid's school, there are very few home baked items for parties and sales, but the majority of the moms with store bought sweets do pretend they made them at home. I don't know why, no one cares (except them I guess) and the kids run around yelling 'my mom got this at ________'

My boys friends were amazed I baked cookies for the last party, turned into an impromptu baking class.

Goody said...

iasa, so nice to meet you! I always wonder who the people that follow my blog are.

I love that the kids are ratting out the parents buying store-bought stuff. That's awesome.

If I didn't live in the middle of nowhere, I'd probably stop baking too.