Cycling Coast to Coast

I’ve fallen behind in my blog posting, because I’ve been very busy the last week. In a nutshell, classes started, I was gone from Thursday to Sunday for a fencing tournament at Duke University, my bike arrived, and I made and sold hundreds of truffles. I’ll post about my new bike later, but for now, let’s talk about chocolate.

When I decided to do Bike & Build last fall, two of my friends at MIT, Devon and Jess, also signed up for the same route, and we planned on doing a lot of fundraising together on campus. For our first fundraiser, we wanted to put a spin on the traditional bake sale. I love making desserts, so we came up with the idea of making and selling homemade truffles for Valentine’s Day.

We spent all last week making truffles. 1,100 of them. My hands smelled like chocolate for days. We have 8 flavors: raspberry, orange, peppermint, chai, Bailey’s Irish Cream, toffee, dark chocolate, and balsamic, and they’re all delicious.

We sold the truffles in a box of 3 for $5, and also offered to deliver them to any MIT affiliated living group (dorms, frats, sororities, etc.).

The lovely Jess, working booth.

A close-up of our sign. Felicia, who’s a student at MassArt, made it for us.

Felicia also made some awesome buttons for us to sell.

Jess, again.

Making change for a customer

The entire time we worked booth, we were busy making boxes and lids. I’m now very skilled at eyeballing a box and being able to fold a lid to fit it perfectly.

Our most popular flavor was chai, followed by Bailey’s. Both sold out on the second day.

The truffle sale was a lot of work, but it was also fun. The final result? We made a profit of $1,349.50!