Ok so I am thinking of starting up a cookie business but after doing about 20 cookies tonight and spending almost 4 hours baking, packaging, and decorating(not to mention my kitchen is a wreck!) I am exhausted and frustrated and wondering how you all do it??? I absolutely love decorating cookies and I think I am getting pretty good, you be the judge, but I need some tips on how to speed the process. I thought maybe I need to cover my cookies in MMF instead of flooding, but I don't know? How do you do a large number of cookies, make them look excellent and not take the whole day to do it? Any tips?
Thanks!
Jennifer
you need to break up the jobs. I will make and cut out my cookies one day (i place each cookie on parchment paper stack and wrap in plastic wrap) place in the fridge or freezer then when needed just pull out and bake. Next do all like cookies at one time, then start with the next ones.I rarely flood cookies, I use fondant on my cookies I roll my fondant through a pasta machine and cut with the same cookie cutter as i used for the cookie, i wrap those with plastic wrap and place in a tupperware container. I make any all my flowers bows and stuff like that ahead of time if possible.
Then it comes time to bake, i just pop those cookies out of the fridge and place in the oven, when they come out of the oven i pop on the fondant when the cookie is still warm (the fondant adheres to the cookie, and usually doesn't take long before i can finish decorating) The mess is minimum cause most of the really messy work is done ahead of time.
I do the same thing, by breaking up the tasks. I use the NFSC recipe and roll using the parchment paper technique which virtually eliminates mess. I use rolled buttercream again with parchment paper and the same cookie cutter. When all the cookies are covered, I pipe details with royal. I recently made 75 purses, and although it was tedious work, it did't take that long.
Diane
I rarely use fondant for my cookies. I too use royal icing. I have learned to cut out and bake my cookies one night and the next night I decorated them with royal icing. I just store my baked cookies in a container or a tightly sealed box. It is so much easier to spend at least two or three nights on cookies especially if you have a huge order.
Agree .... break up the tasks. When I have do it all in one day, I will bake them all, then I stop and clean the area. All baking materials are put away and then I get out the decorating materials. I set up an assembly line ..... For example, I recently did some baby bottles for a baby shower. I did all of the nipple tips in yellow. Then I did all the caps in blue. Then I did all the bottle part in white. I wasn't switching bags all the time and I only had to make one batch of color at a time.
Bottom line is....cookies are tedious and very time consuming....so I must agree with everyone else! Have a well-organized plan of attack! Bake them all one day...prepare all of your icings/colors maybe the same day....decorate the next! I use rolled buttercream on my cookies, and detail them with royal. So, I'll bake all of them one day (store tightly), ice them all with RBC the next and add royal detail if I can....if not I'll add details the 3rd day and package them! When I did lots of cookies, I baked them ahead and froze them....and even cut them all out and froze the cut-out dough shapes....much easier and less stressfull!
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%