Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry
At St. Paschal Church our high school youth have only one fundraiser--the annual Mardi Gras King Cake Sale. The St. Paschal youth held their first King Cake sale in 1998. A former parishioner who owned a bakery was the one to develop our recipe. When her family was transferred out of state the bakery was sold. All recipes were sold to the new owner except for the King Cake recipe, which was given to the youth solely for the purpose of their fundraiser. In those first years we sold 50-100 cakes using the kitchens in the St. Paschal gym, the friary and the school. A few years later we were getting requests for more cakes and eventually had to move our baking day to our neighboring 1st United Methodist Church. They have an ideal setting to roll out the dough and prepare the cakes for proofing and baking in their convection ovens. Baking the cakes for this long we pretty much have it down to an efficient assembly line. We now bake 200 cakes!
In order to make the most of our profit, we solicit donations from our area grocers with Johnny's Pizza donating pizza boxes for us to place the decorated cakes. After 11 years they see me coming and know it is Mardi Gras time! We are so thankful the donors help us with as much as they can donate as we still pay around $300 out of pocket for the rest.
The youth borrow the KC Hall to make the filling on a Wednesday night (ten days before baking) and it is stored in the refrigerators. The following Wednesday they make the dough that rises in plastic bags stored in the commercial refrigerators until we bake them on Saturday at 7am. We are usually done baking by noon as the cakes are then driven to the church gym for distribution until 2:00 in the afternoon. Many people love to get their cakes while they are still warm.
We have many parents who volunteer to help supervise the measuring and watch over the heavy duty mixers that we use. It is always a great time as parents get to know each other and actually have fun getting their clothes dusted with powder sugar or flour. This year we actually bought two heavy-duty stand mixers for the youth to have so we don't have to borrow many personal mixers. The more mixing stations we have, the quicker we get done!
This year the youth received a boost in sales from an article written in the local paper. I am not sure we could handle making much more than 200! The cakes sell for $15 and have been quoted to be "as good as or better than the cakes people order from New Orleans." Our net total for this year was nearly $3,000! The profits will be used to assist our youth to attend regional retreats such as Steubenville South in Alexandria and the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana this November.
Cathy Asmussen
Youth Coordinator
St. Paschal Church
West Monroe, LA
2008 Diocese of Shreveport