Monday, March 7, 2011

Fundraiser: Chocolate Strawberries and Pretzels

For our girls camp fundraiser last year we sold 
Chocolate covered Strawberries and Caramel/Chocolate covered pretzels.  
It was such a hit in our ward and we can't wait to do it again this year!  

We sold these for Mother's day and scheduled to make them in the ward kitchen the Saturday before Mother's day (which was the day before).  It was a huge hit for all the men in our ward!  Our fundraiser made it so easy for them to get their Wives, Mom's and MIL's gifts all in one swoop.  
The women also loved it and bought some for friends and visiting teaching sisters.  Some just bought them to eat for themselves because they were so goooooood and some just gave us money for the fund. :)


I wanted to keep the orders simple.  The choices were:
1 Box of 8 Strawberries   $12
1 Bag of 6 Choc/Caramel Pretzels   $8
1 Combo pack of 4 Strawberries/ 3 Pretzels   $10

Here is what the order forms looked like.  I printed them on pink paper.
*Update- we are planning on printing these out on envelops this year and are not going to offer delivery service.  They will be available for pick up on Sat at noon. or Sun after church in our ward kitchen.

The young women announced it in Relief Society and Priesthood meetings a few weeks before and passed out clip boards with order forms for people to take.  
To collect the money, we would have the Young Women stand in the foyers before and after sacrament meeting with big envelops (8 1/2 x 11) marked "YW Fundraiser" for people to turn in their order form with their money.  I would not accept order forms without money included.

All the forms and money came to me and I created a spread sheet to plug all the information in.
Here is a picture of the spread sheet I made:

Update: Sadly I have lost the copies of my spreadsheets when my old computer died. So I cannot share them with you. Sorry!
 If I end up making new ones, I will make a downloadable link here.


I purchased the pretzels rods ( I don't know how many) and caramel at our local store Orson Gygi
The caramel comes in a 5 pound block for $15.  
It is so easy to melt.  You can do it in a microwave or crocpot.
I melted it in a croc pot and one of my YW counselors and I dipped the pretzels in the caramel the day before to have them ready for Saturday.  Easy. Place them on wax or parchment paper to dry on cookie sheets.  

I bought the strawberries at Costco.  I think 6 cases of them.

For the chocolate we used this recipe:
Large Batch
1/2 case strawberries, room temperature
11 1/2-ounce package milk chocolate chips
11 1/2- ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 Tablespoons shortening
Rinse berries (we did this Saturday morning to keep the strawberries fresh) and let dry on paper towels for a couple of hours ( we had to paper towel dry them to speed up the process but you could get up real early and do it way before ;) ).  Line bottom of baking sheet with waxed paper and place in freezer.  (The night before I went to the church and put all their great big cookies sheets in in the fridge and freezer to get them nice and cold)  Melt chocolate chips in double boiler and stir in shortening until smooth.  Remove baking sheet from freezer.  Hold each berry by stem and dip in chocolate to cover about two-thirds of the berry.  Place berries on baking sheet.  Let berries stand at room temp. to harden for at least an hour Eat within 24 hours.  Never refrigerate!

We dipped strawberries first and the pretzels second to allow drying.  
The girls thought it was fun to drizzle white chocolate on everything.

The most important part, have the girls wear gloves!
This will keep them from finger lickn'.  
It is sooooo tempting but the gloves eliminate the desire.  Plus I remind them. 
Our young women were salivating to eat these!
After we were finished, we let them go to town on the left overs and non perfect strawberries.  That was their favorite part.  

We started our Saturday morning at 9 and were done by noon to deliver.  You don't have to offer delivery but we did and it worked.  We would only deliver within our ward boundaries.  

I bought the boxes at Xpedex.  
The candy boxes are 7 1/4 x 4 3/4 x 2 3/8 for $0.65 each

Xpedex is nationwide.  If you don't have a local store you can call a store and they can ship some to you.
Here is the number to the store I went to: (801) 485-8882

I have spools and spools of ribbon left from the ribbon outlet I went to in D.C a couple of years ago.
All packaged and ready for delivery.  This is where the spread sheet came in handy.  As packages we filled we would refer to the spread sheet and once they were delivered I could check it off.

We raised over $700.00 after cost of Materials.  I'm sure we will beat that this year because now the YW have a great reputation in our ward for these.  A tradition the ward can look forward to year after year.

9 comments:

  1. I love this idea. Just wish our ward wasn't so small and spread out and poor. We would definitely do this. I've been trying to figure out what the best way to have a fund raiser is, and since all our girls come from the few wealthy in our ward, the bishop and I have encouraged them to donate babysitting money, and other money they earn toward their camp. Your girls did a beautiful job on this, and I am still going to share it with our girls.

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  2. Love the great explanation of this fundrasier. I have had many people ask me about it, yet I have never done it before - so I will direct them to your post. I hope that is alright. Love it. I linked to you on my LDS-YW website Girls Camp page. You can see it here:
    http://www.lds-yw.com/html/girls_camp1.html Thanks again for posting it!

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  3. i love your heart. thanks for sharing this!

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  4. What a great idea! I saw it linked to sugar doodle. I'm totally going to suggest this for our camp fundraiser. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. This a wonderful idea! Thank you for sharing.

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  6. Great idea! Thank you for sharing! Are you going to do them again this year? If so, will your prices be the same? We are thinking of doing this :)

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  7. Thank you for all of your information! I love the idea of printing the order form on envelopes! Genius! Our young women's group has chosen this idea for our fundraiser this year. Our final day of orders is this Sunday. So far we have sold over 500 pretzels (and will likely have more by the end). Do you think we'll need more than one 5# block of caramel from Gygi's? The pretzel rods are about 9 inches long. Thanks again for all the information and for sharing your creativity with the rest of us!!!

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  8. Thank you so much for all of the great info! I think we are going to try these this year for Valentine's day for our fundraiser.

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  9. Do you have a word file of the order form?

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