I am planning on making Thanksgiving cookies for a school bake sale next week. I will be decorating them with fondant and royal icing. How long will they last if they are in plastic baggies. Will they make it to Thanksgiving?

laje14, here's a recent thread on this very subject
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-609108.html

For the Holidays I do huge orders of cookies so I bake the cookies and decorate and then freeze them. If they have fondant on them I'm not sure I would freeze them though. I use royal icing.

Cookies placed in a sealed container or wrapped should last up to 2 weeks and I freeze mine for up to 1 month.

I had a few extra cookies leftover that I made for a wedding & they were decorated with fondant. I decided to put them into the freezer for a test. I let them sit in there for over two months before I pulled them out (To be honest, I forgot about them!). When I finally did, they looked just as perfect as they did on the day I put them in there. I don't know how they tasted though because after that I put them on display in my shop. However, I can say that they have been on display now for several months and look just fine. So, looks-wise I think you are safe, however as mentioned, I'm not sure about the taste.

Fondant is fine in the freezer. When you take them out, make sure they aren't touching each other as the condensation develops. It will dry within 2 hrs. If your area is humid or it's been raining, you may need to use a blow dryer, but it works in an instant.

The longest I've let a decorated (royal icing) cookie sit out and then ate it was three weeks. I use a similar recipe to the NFSC. We let the cookies sit out uncovered on purpose just to see how long they lasted, and while they did not taste brand-new, they surprisingly didn't taste very stale, either. I wouldn't do that for a customer, but it sure did give me peace of mind when I have to make cookies up several days in advance.

Deanna