Here’s an idea for your playgroup/kindy fundraising: recipe books. Full of those recipes we all love – these little handbooks of happiness end up with food stuck all over them, pages dog-eared and well-worn from endless use … And it doesn’t have to be for a playgroup – in fact the first time we did this was a family effort: makes for great Christmas presents!
When the project was brought up at RR’s kindy I casually commented that I could help type up the recipes. Suddenly, it was my project, the entire thing. Emailing mums to remind them again to send me their recipes. Spending hours bleary eyed in front of the computer changing ‘Tablespoon’ to ‘Tbsp’. Calling advertisers on the day of our deadline since we had to get them printed in time for the end of year school concert … sound enticing?!
If you ever find yourself tasked with creating a recipe book (don’t laugh, it may happen, and sooner than you think!), here are a few tips.
Find a good printer. Ring around. We had a fabulous printer who did our ones – 70 pages, 11 with colour photos, 100 copies – for $6 each (Easyprint, for those in Hawke’s Bay: thoroughly recommended!!) . Compare this to Warehouse Stationery, who were going to charge about $30 per copy!
Get ads. We had only four ads (local businesses) at $75 each, which took our cost per book down to $3. We priced them at $10 each, so that was $7 profit per copy. We sold out, so made a $700 profit.
Send out a brief ‘style guide’ first, asking people to use conventions like ‘Tbsp’ etc. If you care about this sort of thing, seriously, this saves a LOT of time!
DO include cute photos of the kids! As an editor, collating these was the most fun. I was particularly proud of the cheeky placement of this ‘naked chef’ with ‘Peach Pudding’.
Get onto it early! People notoriously need many, many reminders.
It’s very exciting though to see the fruits of your labours. And there’s something quite lovely about compiling people’s family recipes. Our lovely local kindy has 7 kids (one of the perks of living in the country!). Our cookbook was charmingly rural – I swear, I received three separate cob loaf recipes. Or fancy a kumara, bacon and pineapple wrap? Buckeyes anyone?!
And now I’m about to do it all over again for RR’s other kindy!! Sigh.
Cob loaf recipe No 1,
from the Tots n Dots Recipe Book
1 cob loaf
1 cup tasty cheese, grated
4 spinach (or silverbeet) leaves, chopped
half tsp basil, chopped
1 tsp mustard (whole grain is best)
1 red onion, chopped
500 g cream cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
- Cut top off cob loaf and remove bread from inside to leave a shell; set aside.
- Mix together all other ingredients and pour into cob loaf
- Put lid back on and bake for 1 hour at 180 C.
- Serve with vegetable sticks or whatever pleases you
The Beekeeper’s Wife
