Great Bake Sale Brownie Tips

If you were going to have just one baked good on your bake sale table, it would be the brownie. Brownies are traditional, tasty, and pretty hard to mess up. Even when they’re overcooked, a bit too sweet, or a tad dry, brownies are still awfully good.

But if you really want your table to be empty of all except a few crumbs by the end of the day, bake up several batches of truly delicious, perfectly moist brownies. Here are a few tips for best-selling brownies.

• Use high-quality, fresh ingredients—real butter and quality cocoa or chocolate—and make sure none of your ingredients are expired.

• Don’t overmix the batter. Stir just until the dry ingredients are well incorporated. A few lumps are okay.

• Use the pan size called for in the recipe.

• To enhance the chocolate flavor, add one tablespoon of strong coffee to the batter.

• Nuts or no nuts? Either go completely nut-free or provide both. If you offer brownies with nuts, have them baked by a volunteer who is not also baking nut-free brownies. Pans and utensils that came into contact with nuts will contaminate the nut-free ones, which is a no-no for people highly allergic to nuts.

• It’s not a crime to use brownie mix. Really. But from-scratch brownies aren’t much harder to make than brownies from a mix. Really.

• For a premium brownie, cut off the edges and sell them separately and at a discount. Sell generously sized, edge-free brownies at a premium price.

• Brownies are best if wrapped individually in plastic wrap to keep them from drying out. You could also place them in sandwich bags tied with a ribbon.

• Consider offering several types of brownies, such as a cappuccino brownie, a brownie with swirls of cream cheese, or a blond brownie studded with chocolate chips.

• If you have enough lead time, road-test a few recipes and have a tasting among volunteers. Choose the best recipes for your bake sale.

• Brownies taste best fresh. Either make them the day before the bake sale or make them ahead of time and freeze.