2012 Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share Our Strength - Call for Bakers, Volunteers, and Eaters

Kimberly Henricks-Friedhoff of Rhubarb and Honey and I are excited to be St. Louis's hosts for this year's Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share Our Strength!   Last year, St. Louis food bloggers and avid home bakers raised over $800 to help Share Our Strength fight the problem of childhood hunger in America.  We plan to meet and beat that number this year!  The bake sale is going to be an amazing day filled with sugar highs and smiles.  Please help spread the word by sharing this post or the Facebook event with your friends and family.

If you don't live near St. Louis, remember that this is a nationwide effort.  Check out the list of Food Blogger bake sales by state and see if you can get involved in one near you.  If there isn't one in your area, perhaps you'd like to host!

The Details

• Where: Sappington Farmers' Market
• When: April 28, from 10 AM - 2 PM
• Who: We need bakers, volunteers, and eaters!
• Bakers:  Are you a home baker who can bake something from scratch (cakes, cookies, brownies, pies, fudge, cupcakes, bread, anything)?  We'd love to have your baked goods as part of the sale.  We are looking for baked goods to sell.  You don't need to be a food blogger, and your baked goods don't have to be gourmet. 
• Volunteers: Whether or not you are baking, we'd love a little help setting up, selling baked goods, and cleaning up.  This is a nice chance to spend an afternoon hanging out with some fun folks.
• Eaters: If you've ever wanted to eat the computer screen while reading some of your favorite food blogs, now's your chance to taste the food without having to make it yourself.  Mark your calendar and invite your friends!

How to Sign Up

Share Our Stength Bake Sale Tales and a Note on Technical Difficulties

Let's get the lame stuff out of the way first, and then we can move on to awesomeness.  Blogger (where this blog is hosted) has been having some technical difficulties.  Many of you were unable to enter the contest to win a reusable cupcake wrapper.  The good news is that it's now working - so go enter!  The bad news is that the early comments were removed and still haven't returned.  If you entered already and do not see your comment there, do not despair and do not re-enter.  I have all of the comments saved in my email and I will be sure that you are counted.

Now, onto the Share Our Strength Bake Sale.  The bake sale today was a HUGE success! We raised over $800, not including the amount donated by Sappington Farmers' Market (we are still waiting for an exact number from them).

While I loved the warm fuzzies from helping a worthy cause, perhaps my favorite part of the event was the opportunity to gather, schmooze, and put movement and voices to photos I'd seen of other St. Louis food bloggers.  Andrew Veety said it best when he commented, "If someone had dropped a bomb on the market at drop-off time, we would have lost a huge percentage of St. Louis food writers."  We all decided that we'd have to get together more often (I think we're going to do a potluck next).  If you are a food blogger and haven't met other food bloggers in your area, I highly encourage you to do so (even if you're not a social type, don't you want to try their food?). 

Share Our Strength Bake Sale is This Saturday!

Pineapple meringue cake, cheese danish, coconut fudge, cardamom muffins, goat milk caramels with sea salt, bourbon-vanilla bean caramels, banana split cupcakes, mandel bread, apple pie, fresh-baked bread, banana cake, peanut butter banana cupcakes with Butterfinger buttercream, brown sugar cupcakes with salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream, chocolate avalanche and vanilla avalanche cookies, gooey butter cake cookies, brown butter brownies, spring tulip cookies, homemade pretzels, key lime pie cupcakes, peach cobbler cupcakes, wine and cheese cupcakes, and much, much more will be available at...

...the Share Our Strength Food Blogger Bake Sale this Saturday!

If you live in the St. Louis area, stop by Sappington Farmers' Market from 10am-2pm, say, "Hi!", buy some baked goods, and do your grocery shopping (Sappington will be donating a portion of the proceeds of Saturday's sales to Share Our Strength)!  Get all of the details and share the event with your friends on our Facebook event page.

If you don't live in St. Louis, you can participate in your city.  Check out the map of bake sales going on around the country. 

Call for Bakers, Donors, and Eaters - Share Our Strength Food Blogger Bake Sale on May 14

Update (4/10) - We have a time and location set.  See the Facebook event page for all of the details!

Kimberly of Rhubarb and Honey, Andrew of Andrew Mark Veety, and I are excited to be Missouri's hosts for this year's Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share Our Strength!

Here's the description of the national effort from the Food Blogger Bake Sale home page:

Organized by Gaby Dalkin of What’s Gaby Cooking, food bloggers from across the country will unite to end childhood hunger by holding bake sales in their states. Readers will have the opportunity to taste the baked goods from their favorite food blogs at each state’s bake sale location.

Funds raised through the Food Blogger Bake Sale support Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger in America.  Nearly one in four—children in America face hunger, that’s more than 17 million kids!! Despite the good efforts of governments, private-sector institutions and everyday Americans, millions of our children still don’t have daily access to the nutritious meals they need to live active, healthy lives. More information on Share Our Strength can be found at http://strength.org/ Last year we raised over $16,000 and this year we are shooting to raise even more!!

If you live near St. Louis, we are looking for your help! 

Here's how you can participate:

1. Are you a home baker who can bake something from scratch (cakes, cookies, brownies, pies, fudge, cupcakes, anything)?  We are looking for baked goods to sell.  You don't need to be a food blogger, and your baked goods don't have to be gourmet.  If you can help by donating (even if it's just a small amount), we'd really appreciate it!   Drop me an email at stef@cupcakeproject.com if you are interested in baking for the sale, and we can talk about the details. 
2. Are you a local bakery that would like to donate a gift card to be given away at our bake sale raffle?  We'd love your help and will be happy to pimp your business in future posts, Tweets, and at the Bake Sale itself.   Drop me an email at stef@cupcakeproject.com if you are able to donate to the sale. 
3. Are you someone who likes to eat baked goods? Of course you are!  Mark May 14 on your calendars now.  I'll post more details about the location and time once we have everything locked down.

If you don't live near St. Louis, remember that this is a nationwide effort.  Check out the list of Food Blogger bake sales by state and see if you can get involved in one near you.  If there isn't one in your area, perhaps you'd like to host!

Thanks for your support!  My tummy is rumbling right now and it's only been a couple of hours since I last ate.  It's hard and saddening to picture true hunger.  I hope that we can help in some small way.