Somehow I got suckered into doing a cookie demo/workshop for the moms at my daughters school.  I have never done one before and am a bit nervous.  We are going to be decorating 4-5 cookies each (various shapes) and we are expecting 50 people which means we will be decorating approximately 200-250 cookies total!  All the cookies will need border icing and flood icing but will take a combination of any of the 6 colors of royal icing I am preparing.  So....I have absolutely no idea how much royal icing to make!  I mostly do cakes and rarely cookies.   Help!

hmm, what you need to figure is the minimum number of piping bags you're gonna need--let's see

so you could outline 5 smaller cookies with one medium bag of icing--give or take so that's 50 bags--

then for filling--2.5 cookies per bag maybe? 100 bags

then to make it easier--let's round up to a number easily divisible by the 6 colors

• so 60 outline bags and 120 fill bags
• so 10 outline bags of each color
• 20 fill bags of each color

then you could tweak it if you think that's too much or too little--

something like that?

but depends on how big the cookies are and how big your bags are too--

and when five different women get their sweaty hands on one bag of icing...

also could be broken down by how many different tables full of people there will be...

but how many bottles and outline bags did your amount make up? 

one double recipe is enough for 7.5 participants

37.5 cookies divided by 5 cookies is enough for 7.5 peeps or 1.5 tables

or one double recipe of icing is enough for 1.5 tables--

so if you have ten tables you need your double recipe times 7 or 8 give or take a bit

i think

ok--i got it--if one double batch makes 9 outline bags and 9 bottles--you are there  

i'm thinking you're gonna need to up the ante some to make it sufficient for each table--

but table to table can share some too maybe

ty!  I feel like I should have hired and actuary for this :)

It is such a cheap recipe, I would make plenty of icing! When do you need this by? If it were me, I would make a double batch of each color, and put them in icing bags with disposable plastic tips and seal the edges so it doesn't spill out the back. I would throw the whole mess away at the end of the night.

You're getting paid, right? Still, It will COST more time to clean up all that mess than to buy disposable and chuck it all.

And I came by this reasoning because with all those cookies and people, fighting over bags (or politely waiting while some ham fisted gal wastes it all and going home with 3 outlined cookies and 3 bare cookies) will make it NO FUN AT ALL.

AWow! Making my head spin! Haha I did this on a much smaller scale (10 teenage girls) for a friends daughters bday, while in the end it was really fun and the girls had a great time, it was very overwhelming and I definitely wished I had brought less options and just more basics enough for each person to have their own. I agree with annabakescakes go with disposable!!!!!!!

I like the whole disposable tip idea.  You can even let people take the leftovers home if they want.