The sign-up sheet taped to the Year 1 classroom door had a biro on a string and two columns, Savoury and Sweet. When I added my name a fortnight ago, Sweet already had nine names and Savoury had two. I wrote "cheese straws" next to mine before I'd decided whether I could face making them, which is how most of my commitments get made.
The class parties are this Thursday, 18 December, one for Alfie's Year 1 and one for Isla's Year 5, and I'm sending food to both. So here is the plan, together with last year's results, because last year's results are the reason there is a plan.
What came home last year
In December 2024 I made sixty mini sausage rolls in one evening, thirty for Alfie's Reception party and thirty for Isla's Year 4 one. Batch cooking is how I live. The boxes came home on the Thursday with the lids sticky and the sausage rolls looking up at me. Twenty-four were left from Alfie's and twenty-one from Isla's. The teaching assistant who handed one box back said the staff had enjoyed theirs, in the voice of someone being very kind. Rob ate sausage rolls for tea four nights running and said he wasn't complaining. The rest went in the freezer and were gone by the end of January.
I worked out why afterwards, mostly by asking Isla. A sausage roll is flaky and greasy, and you have to hold it in one hand while the other hand holds a paper cup. The children had gone for the crisps, which need no napkin, and the cake, which is cake. I'd also sent a tray of cucumber and carrot sticks to Isla's party, and it came home missing exactly one carrot stick. I'm told that was a teacher.
What went down well
What vanished last year was somebody else's pigs in blankets. Isla reported that they were gone in ten minutes: one bite, nothing crumbling, no plate needed. She told me the way she tells me the Wi-Fi is down. "Please can you not send the sausage rolls again."
She has a point, and I've listened. A lot of what comes home from a class party is the food that needed a plate, a napkin or a second hand. What goes is small, dry on the outside and can be eaten while running.
This year
- Alfie's class, savoury: thirty-six cheese straws from two sheets of ready-rolled puff pastry (£2.30) and 150g of mature cheddar (£1.10). That's £3.40, or about 9p a straw. Alfie hates bits and doesn't mind plain cheese, so no paprika, no seeds.
- Isla's class, savoury: forty-eight pigs in blankets, from two packs of chipolatas (£1.89 each) and two packs of streaky bacon (£1.79 each). That's £7.36.
Together they come to £10.76 for eighty-four party-sized mouthfuls, about 13p each. Thursday is the day I work from home, but a morning of baking would cost me two hours I haven't got, so it's all done on Wednesday night after tea. The cheese straws go in first because they need to cool, then the pigs in blankets, which are baked and eaten cold, the way they always are at parties.
The food has to be in a named box at the classroom door by 8:50. I'll put masking tape on both lids with the child's name on, because there is always one box that ends up in the wrong cupboard. The school asks for nothing with nuts, and the sheet has a "free from" column that I read before I wrote anything down. Neither of mine has nuts in, and I'll say so on the lid in felt tip.
The bit I can't plan
I can't promise what the children will actually eat. Parties are mostly crisps, cake and the satsuma someone's grandmother insisted on, and a cheese straw has to compete with all of that. The honest position is that I'm making what I think will go and hoping. Isla has agreed to report back on the pigs in blankets, and Alfie has agreed to report back on nothing, as is his right.
Whatever comes home on Thursday, Rob has volunteered to deal with it. He has had the practice.
