NEWTOWN SCHOOL BAKE SALE CUPCAKE PRICED AT $48 — PTA INSISTS "IT'S FOR THE TURF"

A cupcake at a Newtown primary school bake sale on Saturday morning was offered for sale at $48, with the Parent Teacher Association explaining it was a "premium tier" item supporting the school's artificial turf fund.

The cupcake, vanilla with a buttercream swirl and a single edible silver ball, sat on a doily beneath a hand-lettered sign reading "SUGGESTED DONATION: $48". A second sign clarified that EFTPOS was available "for the bigger ticket items".

Parent Annika Vermeulen, who had brought along a five-dollar note and a child, said she was buggered if she knew when a cupcake stopped being a cupcake. "I baked sixty scones in 1974 for the school gala and we charged ten cents," she said, before conceding she may have been thinking of a different school, and a different decade, and possibly someone else's scones.

PTA treasurer Felicity Mainwaring-Coombe defended the pricing, telling The Daily Yarn the cupcake reflected "the true cost of community fundraising in the current climate". Asked what was in it, she said: "Flour. And intention." The turf fund, she added, was currently $94,000 short.

A father near the sausage sizzle, which was charging $4.50 for a Hellers on Tip Top white, muttered that the whole thing had "got a bit Wadestown" and bought three sausages in protest. The cupcake remained unsold at 11.40am.

By noon it had been quietly relocated to the staffroom raffle.