I have a bunch of wedding cupcakes to do for a wedding next weekend and I have been waiting for my supplier to get the plastic cupcake clamshell containers in stock to transport 12 or 24 at a time. Normally I box my cupcakes in a bakery box with the insert inside, but since I need to do so many I thought that the clamshells would work better for this one time so I can stack them easier to fit in my vehicle. Anyway, my supplier has been out of stock and I can't find anyone online that has them in stock either. I also checked locally at a restaurant supply store that sells paper products for local businesses and they checked their books for me to see if they could order for me (but their supply company didn't have them).

I was at Sam's Club yesterday stocking up on my baking ingredients and noticed all their paper products. They have some of the clamshell containers on their shelves, but not for cupcakes. I decided to check the bakery to see what kind of boxes they used. They had large window boxes with clear plastic cupcake holders inside that held 2 dozen cupcakes each. I asked the bakery lady if she knew where I could get those boxes and explained that I had a bunch of cupcakes to deliver next weekend. She said "I would gladly sell you some, but we get these in with the cupcakes already in them. We just ice them." I almost laughed. I know Wal-Mart & Sam's get their cakes in frozen, but I guess I always thought they actually baked their cupcakes...

The lady working with her also got in on our conversation and I couldn't help but watch what she was doing as we talked ... remove frozen pie from freezer... place on cookie sheet... open oven door to remove baked pies... set hot pies on cooling rack to cool... put frozen pies in oven... already cooled pies were put into brown pie boxes that said "Fresh baked at your local Sam's"!! Had to laugh and I thought I'd share!!

(BTW: I'm going to get the inserts and bakery boxes like I always do.)

LOL - guess that's why we do what we do!

.........cooled pies were put into brown pie boxes that said "Fresh baked at your local Sam's..........

Well that they are !

I'm surprised they didn't offer to sell you any of the 'used' containers. She could have pocketed the $ and no one would have known the difference.

i know some people are going to disagree with me when i say this, but i dont feel they are miss advertising. technically the pies are freshly baked. they come in frozen and un cooked so its just the raw material than they are baked and boxed. As long as it doesnt come already baked and they just thaw them out, the tag is correct in saying fresh baked. Alot of restraunts will say that they have fresh things on the menu when in reality it comes in frozen and sometimes already precooked.

i know some people are going to disagree with me when i say this, but i dont feel they are miss advertising. technically the pies are freshly baked. they come in frozen and un cooked so its just the raw material than they are baked and boxed. As long as it doesnt come already baked and they just thaw them out, the tag is correct in saying fresh baked. Alot of restraunts will say that they have fresh things on the menu when in reality it comes in frozen and sometimes already precooked.

And this the reason why we need to educate the customer. Like the lady that called the day a cake order was due to talk to me. They were thinking of ordering a smaller cake. Um, I do not have a frozen stash and can just pull out a smaller cake. I bake fresh. From. Scratch. It is the name of my shop. So no, you can't change the order the day it is picked up, whether it is smaller or larger.

I believe I told her that I am not like Sams Club or Walmart, I don't have a frozen stash.

Yes, fresh baked means, baked, not the dough is made here with skilled hands and then baked and finished. It's when the grocery store has a huge sign above their doughnuts that states "Made fresh through the day" when they actually pull them from the freezer as needed that floats my boat.

I worked at a grocery store last year, as the night "baker". I was actually the doughnut fryer who pushed racks of frozen dough into the oven and set a timer. We did make the doughnuts from freshly made dough. From a mix, but we made the dough and shaped them, proofed and fryed, then finished.

The muffins come in frozen, unbaked globs of batter already in a cupcake paper in a box. The night girl sets everything up and places the number of needed muffins into muffin tins and puts them on a rack. When I came in I pulled the rack from the cooler and sprinkled the tops with coarse sugar and in the oven the whole rack went. There were many different flavors and I honestly couldn't tell one flavor from the other, except for the chocolate ones. The person in the morning (usually the assistant manager) would come in a stock the wall of muffins. I had to work on that shift once and she pushed the rack at me and pointed. I didn't have a clue which muffin was which!! So she showed me that when she couldn't tell, then she picks up a muffin and pulls it apart and sticks it up to her nose (too close for my taste!!!!!) and sniffs (someone elses muffin!!!!) and then she can tell the difference. EEEEEEeeeeeeeewwwwwwww.

So. A long time later a gentlemen comes up to me at 2am and asks what I have fresh out of the oven. I looked over the racks and the doughnuts and told him what was ready to go or if something needed longer to cool. He did this a lot, so I knew him by then. He asked what kind of muffins. I told him all the ones that usually go out in the morning, I really don't know which is which. He gives me an odd look and asks something similar. So I tell him that I know the chocolate muffins, the bran muffins but most look the same to me and the girls who set up don't mark the trays. Again with the odd look. Then he looks right at me and says "Don't you mix up the different batters and then make the muffins?" I am always honest and open with people, I'm not mean or snotty, but I will not lie. I told him that the muffins are like everything but the yeast raised doughnuts that I was making at that moment, I pointed at the very large coolers and freezers and said, they come into the store in a box as frozen batter and the girl at night puts them in the tins and I just bake them. I can tell you the temperature they bake at, the time they take to bake and what they should look like when done, but that is all I do. Someone else comes in and they have learned which muffins are which and they put them in the baskets on the wall for the customers.

You would not believe the look on his face. He honestly thought that little old me was making all the doughnuts (6 hours out of 8 hours of my night job) baking 20 or more different kinds of bread, 20 different flavors of muffins, 10 different kinds of cookies, plus all the stuff that just came out of boxes (already packaged) and was just labeled and set on the shelf still frozen!!!! So then he asked what exactly came in frozen? I walked out onto the floor and told him the various way that things came in, some frozen and then "baked fresh", some just warmed up from the freezer and some already to go, just labeled and put on the floor. He was really gob-smacked!! He said that he thought bakeries baked things, and I told him how grocery store bakeries work (short and sweet) and it was a real shame because all the chemicals and the loss of a skilled work force.

Needless to say, from then on I didn't see much of him except when he came over for a fresh from the fryer doughnut. Poor guy.

Tami