A note from Chefolio: we make an app that edits food photos. Chefolio is designed to change lighting and backgrounds, but an AI edit can also change the food. We label our edits and check them against the source.
Teaching example edition: sample layouts use labelled AI imagery or explicitly labelled AI edits. Example prices, dates and offer details are fictional; they are not offers from a food business.
Easter is the holiday that sneaks up on home bakers. It moves every year, it lands right after the Valentine's rush, and in a lot of places it collides with spring break. In 2027, Easter Sunday is March 28, which makes Good Friday March 26.
The fix is starting earlier than feels necessary. Eight weeks out, in early February, is about right.
The timeline
Date | What happens |
|---|---|
Early February | Choose three or four sets and sketch them |
February 15 to 21 | Bake the samples, after Valentine's orders are out |
February 22 to 28 | Photograph them and build the menu |
Early March | Announce the menu and the date orders open |
Around March 8 | Open orders |
Friday, March 19 (or when you sell out) | Close orders |
March 22 to 25 | Bake and decorate |
March 26 and 27 | Pickups on Good Friday and Saturday |
Check your local school calendar for spring break. If a lot of your customers will be away the week before Easter, move the order deadline earlier.
A menu that sells without burying you
Easter menus tend to split into three kinds of buyers, and a small menu can cover all of them:
- A decorated set for the table or for gifting, like eggs, bunnies, and carrots in a box of 6 or 12
- Individually wrapped cookies for Easter baskets, sold in a small bundle
- A paint-your-own kit, with plain-iced cookies and a palette of edible paint, which families buy as an activity
A kit gives customers an activity as well as cookies. Factor the packaging, edible colors, and brush into your costs and prep time.
Photographing pastels
Pastel icing is harder to photograph than you'd expect. Pale yellow, mint, and lavender sit close to white, so a small color cast from kitchen lights can turn your mint cookies gray or your yellow ones beige. Overexpose a little and the pastels vanish entirely.
A few habits help:
- Shoot by a window with all the kitchen lights off, so you have one color of light
- Tap the cookies to focus, then drag the exposure down slightly. Pastels keep their color when they're a touch darker
- Put a plain white sheet of paper at the edge of the first frame to help spot an obvious cast. Paper that looks yellow or blue is a useful warning, but paper that looks white does not prove every icing color is accurate. Compare the photo with the cookies (our yellow cookie photo guide walks through the setup)
- Compare the photo with the real cookie before you move on
AI-generated illustrations of two color appearances, not a controlled before-and-after photo test or a Chefolio result. The paper helps explain what to watch for; it is not a measured white-balance reference. Check an actual photograph against the actual cookies.
The photos you need
- One photo of each set, with space above for the name and price
- A close-up of the most detailed cookie
- The basket bundle, wrapped the way it's sold
- The paint-your-own kit, opened, so parents can see what's inside
- A flat lay of everything together for the announcement
If you shot a Valentine's menu on the same backdrop with the same light, use that setup again. Your spring posts will match your winter ones, and returning customers can recognize your menus at a glance.
Both images are AI-generated teaching examples. The left shows individual bags and ribbons; the right shows a kit with cookies, a palette and two brushes. A customer menu needs your own photographs of the exact bundle and kit contents, and your kit must use edible colors.
Pricing, briefly
We won't tell you what to charge. The one Easter-specific tip is to price the three kinds of product separately and clearly: the decorated set, the basket bundle, and the kit. Parents comparing a $30 decorated box to a $25 kit need to see at a glance what each one includes. Our guide to cookie price lists with photos has a layout that works.
Where Chefolio fits
To try a different setting for a sample photo, upload it to Chefolio and pick a style. Compare the result with your original before adding each set's name and price in your layout tool.
Pastels are exactly where color accuracy matters most, so check every result against the real cookies. If the mint looks different from what you piped, don't use that version. When you post, add a short "background edited" note.
You can try it on your samples:
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