Amateur baker looking to donate food I make so I can develop baking skills?

[lizfrances]

Hi,

I've been trying to find somewhere online to ask about this.

I'm a novice home baker and I really want to develop my baking skills. The problem is I don't have an office to take food into, and my friends and family are all being careful about their eating so I don't want to force cakes on them! And obviously I don't want lots of this stuff lying around either.

It can be pretty difficult to just make individual servings of things when trying out recipes, and just seems a bit disheartening, so I was wondering if there are places I can basically post packages of baked goods to?! For example, any charities (in the UK), or even the armed forces, etc?
Feedback might be nice but really I'd just like to make it easier to try out new things whilst letting other people benefit from it!

I know there's always the option of doing a bake sale, etc, but really I'd just prefer just to send items to people/an organisation directly as I'm not up for organising one right now.

At this point I'm almost ready to just deliver some of my baking to anyone with an address who wants some cookies!

Thank you.

Liz

 

[Norcalbaker59]

You’ll have to check with the food safety laws in the UK.

In the US food charities are prohibited from accepting any prepared food produced from a home kitchen due to food poisoning risks. Food charities in the US are only allowed to accept prepared food from a licensed food producer, such as a grocery store, restaurant, bakery, or licensed cater.

I develop my own recipes, so I bake a lot. But I am a celiac so I cannot eat wheat based foods. When you bake using metric weight its pretty simple to scale. When I test a recipe I scale it to a small yield. For example, 6 cupcakes; one 8” round cake layer; 12 cookies. Batch size/yield can be whatever you choose when working in metric weight.

 

[Becky]

I think your best bet might be to get in touch with local charities - eg homeless shelters, help for the elderly, etc. Anywhere that supplies food to people. Often these places have volunteers who produce the meals, and if you get in touch with them they would be able to advise you on the relevant rules

 

[lizfrances]

Thank you both for all the information, and sorry if my question seemed a bit silly or all over the place as I was pretty tired!

I think, really, when it comes to charities I already knew that the food was really going to need to be prepared in a space that has been officially inspected. I'll see how my local soup kitchen works, though, again I'm guessing everything would need to be made on the premises.

 

[retired baker]

Hi,

I've been trying to find somewhere online to ask about this.

I'm a novice home baker and I really want to develop my baking skills. The problem is I don't have an office to take food into, and my friends and family are all being careful about their eating so I don't want to force cakes on them! And obviously I don't want lots of this stuff lying around either.

It can be pretty difficult to just make individual servings of things when trying out recipes, and just seems a bit disheartening, so I was wondering if there are places I can basically post packages of baked goods to?! For example, any charities (in the UK), or even the armed forces, etc?
Feedback might be nice but really I'd just like to make it easier to try out new things whilst letting other people benefit from it!

I know there's always the option of doing a bake sale, etc, but really I'd just prefer just to send items to people/an organisation directly as I'm not up for organising one right now.

At this point I'm almost ready to just deliver some of my baking to anyone with an address who wants some cookies!

Thank you.

Liz

I feed my neighbors, I drop off samples to the medical clinic where my doctor has a practice, no one can stop you from feeding anyone you want. Everyone love free food.