Hi Everyone

I have 100 decorated cookies due for mardi gras.  I have never done this many at once and I am feeling overwhelmed.  I have no idea when I should bake them, if I should ahead of time and freeze, etc.  Could you recommend a baking and decorating schedule I should use?  Does anyone have some kind of worksheet I can use to organize what all I need, colors of icing and all that good stuff?  I feel like I need to be really organized in order to pull this off. 

Any help and/or advice you can give will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance

Michelle

You could make up your cookie dough a month ahead of time and freeze it. They have very nice ideas and cutters at Hobby Lobby and Micheal's. I have these flat long storage containers that I stored my baked Valentine's Day cookies in until I was ready to decorate them. I stated making up cookie bouquets and boxes to sale the first week of February.

That's a great idea!  Did you cut the cookies out of the dough and then freeze them or did you freeze all of the dough uncut?  Did your cookies smell or taste freezer burned?  Did they taste fresh once eaten?  I'm sorry I'm just paranoid with them tasting or smelling freezer burned.  

Thank you for your response.

Michelle

I have good experience with freezing dough and baked cookies. You can even freeze them decorated but they may develop dark spots in a few places. 

Any chance on sharing the butter cookie recipe? I have not been able to find a yummy cookie recipe where it tastes yummy with frosting or  without...and do you use royal icing to decorate? I wanted to make some to ship to my kids but don't want the frosting to get smashed up :(

Yes but it's huge, for a 20qt mixer, give me a minute I'll post it. I use it for all my cut out cookies and decorate them with RI.

Cutout Cookies

Used for all seasonal cutout designs

For 20qt & Cake Paddle

Granulated Sugar 4#

Shortening           2#

Butter (RT)           4#

Vanilla ext            4 caps  (4tbs)

Baking Powder     1 1/2 oz

Mix until smooth

Add to above:

Eggs                     8 eggs

Mix and scrape down

Add to above:

Cake Flour               8#

Mix until well incorporated 

p.s I use European unsalted butter but it works with any salted or unsalted butter use what you prefer. I also use vanilla bean paste with mine.

You need to make the dough, cut them out and freeze them or cut out/ bake and freeze as soon as possible.   I have never decorated and froze them but other CC'ers say it can be done.  100 cookies can take a lot of time  depending on how much decoration and detail you will put on each cookie.  

  I would cut out and freeze on parchment paper on sheet pan.  Pull off the pan when frozen and freeze in plastic bags ( freezer bags).  Then you can pull as many out as you want to bake off.

 Will you be flooding all the cookies before doing detail?  That takes a few days as well if you have no place to stack them to dry and they need to stay level.  Worse part is storage for me!  Good luck.

by the way are you going to do the Mardi Gras masques.... I love that design!

Are you using royal icing??  Make and colour the icing a few days before you need it so the colours can darken well. ( I'm thinking of that dark purple and green used for New Orleans along with the golden yellow.) 

My schedule would be make dough and roll out/cut freeze each day for a couple of days about a month ahead.

8 days before due-- bake cookies.  ( Store in plastic or containers to keep fresh)

7 days before-- make royal icing in batches and colour icings.  ( I store my RI that I've coloured in deli containers with lids in fridge or plastic containers with lids.) 

6 days to go-- flood all the cookies and dry overnight ( or do this in batches -depending on your space

5 -3days before-- start decorating cookies.  You will need to take breaks and stretch your back and arms.  Piping that many cookies can really make the wrists hurt sometimes-- so be sure to give yourself enough breaks.

Start packing and packaging cookies after they are really dry ( at least 4 hours)  does this schedule help any?