When you make treats to send in to school parties...

We are allowed to take homemade stuff in to school still. Only two parties per year, one in December and one in May, and then people often still send in birthday cupcakes. I make cookies and brownies from scratch but cupcakes are usually a box mix with homemade frosting.

The teachers and kids are well aware of who has severe allergies and cannot eat things of unknown origin. Additionally, we have kids with celiac disease, families who are strict vegetarians, and families who have religious dietary restrictions. Somehow the world still goes on when I bring in my homemade brownies or cookies. We do have a couple of peanut free rooms, and when my kids have been in those, I have been careful to use peanut-free ingredients (actually much easier to do with homemade snacks than with store-bought ones IME).

Well, yes. But we don't have any kids with life-threatening allergies. We are not peanut-free. And the food goes home for the parents to approve, anyway.

And I know I've seen you freak out about homemade food before, allergies or no allergies, just on general principle.

It's okay if you don't want to eat my cookies or cupcakes. I'm just tweaking you a little.

i made homemade martha stewart banana bread for a school bake sale.  4 full sized loaves, cut into slices. two teachers bought a slice each. most kids don't care about quality, they go for the "flash"! 

now i bake brownies from a box in cupcake tins, throw in 5 m+m's each and send those in.
(while i have commented before our schools are nut-free, seems like people lightens up a bit when fundraising for children who survived an earthquake in the philippines or for an orphanage in burkina faso.  not saying sending in items chockfull of nuts, just not strict about things being prepackaged and labelled.)

i am not sure how you could have a bake sale/contribution to a class party if you need to guarantee everything offered was nut-free or produced in a nut-free kitchen as the only parents that *could* bake then would be parents of nut allergy children (and i assuming they have a nut free kitchen....). 

We can bring in homemade, and I am not in a small town or small district. I tend to do store bought for two reasons, however. One, there are always some kids with allergies in class and while it is true they can just not eat the treats, I hate to make something for the class and have kids left out. I got some teary thanks from a second-grader once for bringing treats he could eat too once, and it stuck with me. Two, frankly, kids seem to enjoy the store bought treats more than what I cook, so maybe that is a commentary on my cooking, but I think given my neighborhood the kids are so happy to see something non-organic with toxic sprinkles .

We have bakeries here that are very specific about allergies and ingredients, so I have found it easy to do store bought.

We can send in homemade or store bought. The kids don't care as long as it tastes good. So far we've not had to deal with severe allergies. The kids are not allowed to take any food or candy home with them though. Each teacher usually has a sign up sheet for all the parties through the year at back to school night in September. There is quite a variety of healthy and junky stuff on the list so kids that may have to stay away from certain ingredients can still participate.