Large Cookie Order - How to Execute the Project?? 750 Cookies!

You could try church kitchens or caterers. The former usually have commercial kitchens, at least here in the US. The latter may allow you to share space during their slow times. Also, you could always have a custom cutter made - Truly Mad Plastics just made one for me and did a great job. There are other 3-D printers of cutters who make custom cutters too.

Here's the link to that cutter source: www.trulymadplastics.com/

Best of luck with the order! You can do it! 

While I hate freezing cookies, I would make them in batches and freeze them.  If you are doing royal icing I would also decorate in batches and freeze.  Another option for decorating is to buy the custom cutters from truly mad plastics:  the outline, the star and the funny color things.  Then do the cookie in fondant.  Fondant will go much faster.  That said I have never frozen fondant.  Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Thank you for your replies, I shall start contacting some local churches. And will look into the cutters!

I would make the stars and all the color sections ahead of time as royal icing transfers.  You could have those done weeks ahead of time.  Then you are only dealing with white icing. 

750 cookies is quite a number to make in a kitchen that is not your own.  Transporting all your supplies and  if you use RI will they need to dry several hours.  Do you leave your cookies there overnight drying??  Do you have to RENT your borrowed commercial space?  If so I would rather take that money and invest in some additional baking equipment like more trays or something that would help me complete the task at home.

Think about your space.  Do you have enough freezer space to make the dough in advance?  What about storage containers in case  you bake a day or so ahead of decorating.  

How are you packaging them?  Individually wrapped will keep them fresh and allow you some additional "make ahead time" 

I would start 7 days before. I would make a schedule that had me baking 150 a day.  Decorate with RI and transfers. Dry overnight and package in the morning.  Repeat for 5 days. This will give a 1 day cushion if something goes wrong.

Day 8 Open a bottle of wine! and avoid looking at anything that has rainbow colors or triangle patterns!!

OH, and MOST IMPORTANT,  make sure you are charging a good price.  Do not sell yourself short on the money end.  All that will happen with that is halfway through baking you will be exhausted and wishing you never took the job!!! 

Make it worth your while.

~Heidi

Thank you Heidi for the tips! I never thought of doing the transfers, so maybe that's the best way to go. 

i do have an extra freezer, so freezing the dough would definitely work. I think that the client wants all of them wrapped individually and tied with ribbon.

i called around a few places today and most of them were a no. However the one place I did find wanted to charge $165 for 3 hours! So I was just debating whether or not I'll be able to do the project at home, and if it's worth it. And I totally agree about the logistics of managing a project like this when renting the space.

i usually only bake one sheet of cookies at a time, but have 3 oven racks. I was wondering whether I could perhaps bake 3 trays at once (approx 36 cookies) but would I then have some that bake uneven?

I do also have a three shelf dehydrator so that may speed up the process a little!

your schedule sounds perfect btw, thank you so much for this :-)

i was quite overwhelmed but looking at the way you break it down, makes it more "doable"

Also, any suggestions on how to go about creating RI transfers of this quantity?

my last attempt at transfers were disastrous, most of them broke before I even had chance to stick them on the cookies!

Personally I couldn't pipe 150 cookies a day for 5 days, but it I'm older and had shoulder trouble this year.  How about a stencil that has only triangle missing.  You can then either do thick royal icing or airbrush.   imagine starting with one color and doing it for all the cookies and then go onto the another color.  It would be much faster the piping and easier on your shoulder. 

The stencil is a good idea too! Never used one though...

Cookies posted:

The stencil is a good idea too! Never used one though...

Stencils are great!  I actually learned about stencils from Julia Usher at the first cookiecon.

How can I find a good tutorial on the stenciling?

I would love to know Julia's thoughts on which medium to use for this volume of cookies: RI transfers, stenciling or hand piping ?

thank you again!

I guess I could even "paint" on the colors through a stencil with edible paint ?? 

My guess is stenciling.  I'm not sure if she would use Royal icing or an airbrush.  I would air brush because it would be quick.

Ok thanks - I don't have an air brush so maybe I need to look into investing in one if I decide to do this project!!

Any airbrush make / model suggestions would be awesome! 

Cookies posted:

I would love to know Julia's thoughts on which medium to use for this volume of cookies: RI transfers, stenciling or hand piping ?

thank you again!

Hey! I am glad I saw this - An aside: please use the new tagging feature to alert me, or other members, who you'd like to draw into a post. (Simply click the "@" symbol and start typing the name of the person you want to tag, and then select the right person from the options that automatically come up. When properly tagged, the person's name will show up in pink.)

Anyway, to answer your question, I would use stenciling for this many cookies. Making transfers is as time-consuming as hand-piping (if not more so, because you then need to hand-place all of the transfers). If you were to airbrush the colored parts, the stenciling would go super fast (faster than with royal icing, which usually necessitates more stencil cleaning between steps). Perhaps, for a little dimension, you could then stencil the central star with royal icing. I have several videos that address stenciling on my YouTube channel, as well as a long Stenciling 101 video that digs into stenciling with royal icing in great detail.

Hope this helps.