Tips to make your trip to the Calgary Vegan Bake Sale a sweet success

By Giselle Wedemire

Bring on the sugar rushes and the food comas, because the Calgary Vegan Bake Sale is back for its seventh year this weekend. I couldn’t be more overjoyed because a) I love baking, and b) I love helping animals. And, being a regular volunteer baker for this bake sale, I get to combine both of these passions to create a truly satisfying weekend. It's a real win-win!*

If you’re new to the Calgary Vegan Bake Sale, here’s the scoop: every year, around May or June, the hardworking bake sale team sets up shop in the parking lot of the Community Natural Foods Chinook Market (202 61 Ave S.W.) to sell homemade vegan goodies of all shapes and sizes to benefit two great local animal charities. This year, we’ll be selling a variety of goodies and raffle tickets from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., or until we completely sell out, and all proceeds will benefit Alberta Spay & Neuter Task Force and The Alice Sanctuary.

Whether this is your first vegan bake sale or your twentieth, here are some pointers on how to make the most of your bake sale experience:

Show up on time

If you’ve got a hankering for a specific item, or are looking forward to picking through a smorgasbord of vegan goodies, it’s in your best interest to show up on time so you can have your pick of the litter, so to speak. However, I advise you to treat a bake sale like a kid's birthday party  -- meaning don’t show up early and wait around for the sale to hopefully start earlier than anticipated. Volunteers work hard to get everything set up perfectly and you showing up way before the beginning of a bake sale can make them anxious.

Be prepared

The bake sale is always jam-packed, especially right at the beginning, so to cut down on any confusion or frustration, it's best to come prepared. Most important of all is to bring cash because there will be no debit/credit machines on-site. It might also help things move more smoothly if you can bring as many Tupperware containers as you think you may need to store your haul. There's generally plastic to-go containers to package goodies at the sale, but the less waste you can generate, the better!

Be adventurous

If you’ve got your eye on an unusual treat, I say try it out! You’ll never know if you like it if you never try it, and a bake sale is the perfect time and place to try out new flavours and treats without having to commit to making (and consequently eating) an entire batch of an experimental bake. This philosophy might come in handy because I will be donating a dozen or two super yummy mini ‘bacon’ pecan pies to this year’s sale and I’ll be relying on you guys to keep an open mind (and tummy!) to this flavour combo.

Imagine this beauty but in miniature form. It should be a good time!

Pay it forward

After all is said and done this Saturday, I urge you to consider contributing your time and baking talents to the next bake sale. If the treats you score at this year’s vegan bake sale tickle your fancy, try your hand at baking your own versions of bake sale favourites and then reach out to organizers of the Calgary Vegan Bake Sale to see how you can help out next time. 

Are you planning on attending this year's bake sale? What do you think of mini bacon pecan pies? Let me know!

* Unless, of course, you try to bake an untested recipe the night before the bake sale and you fail so hard that you end up crying tears of frustration on the floor of your kitchen. Not that that happened to me one year, though...