AWAPUNI SCHOOL BAKE SALE CUPCAKE PRICED AT $18, PTA INSISTS IT'S "ARTISAN"

A single cupcake at the Awapuni Primary bake sale on Saturday was priced at $18, with the PTA describing it as "artisan" and "reflective of ingredient costs", and no one in the queue willing to be the first to say anything.

The cupcake, a vanilla sponge with what was described on the handwritten sign as "Madagascan buttercream and edible gold leaf", sat alone on a doily beside a tray of $3 gingernuts that nobody was buying. My late husband Gerald, who ran the Marshlands scout gala for eleven years, would have had it off the table and into the bin before the doors opened.

Parent Fiona Bellamy, of Awapuni, told The Daily Yarn she'd "felt the pressure" to buy one. "You can't stand there and not buy it, can you. Everyone's watching. I paid the eighteen dollars and I ate it in the car and it tasted like a normal cupcake, if I'm honest. A bit dry."

The PTA treasurer, Annalise Cotter-Whitmore, defended the pricing, citing "the cost of proper vanilla" and "a small margin for the shade sail fund". Asked whether $18 was perhaps steep for a school bake sale in Palmerston North, she said the cupcake was "a statement piece" and that people who didn't understand were "welcome to the gingernuts".

One grandmother present, who declined to be named because her daughter-in-law is on the committee and is frankly the sort of woman who'd bring quinoa to a sausage sizzle, said the whole thing was "a bit much". She added: "In my day you got a lamington for twenty cents and you were grateful. Now it's gold leaf. On a cupcake. At a primary school."

By 11am the artisan cupcake remained unsold. The gingernuts, marked down to $2, had also not moved.