400 cookies

The house project scene has been quiet around HoHub. The minute I set down the last tool for the mini mudroom, I turned my attention to a different sort of project: baking--baking 400 wedding cookies, to be specific.

Way back in March, when I brought some St. Patrick's Day cookies in to the office, my colleague Peggy asked if I would make cookies for her wedding. I obliged. Okay, it was more like, "OMG. Really? Yes I would love to!" and then later realizing that meant A LOT of cookies.

I've never made 400 of anything in my life, so it was quite an undertaking. Knowing the time it would take to make, roll out, bake, then ice the cookies was overwhelming. I'm a planner. I like things to be done on time. But cookies need to be fresh, so I had to figure out a way to work ahead as much as possible.

First things first, stocking up on ingredients!

Thank goodness for DawnMarie and her Costco membership! I did have to pick up a few more items, but that bag of 10X powdered sugar saved having to buy several smaller bags. (Note to self: get DMV to take me back to Costco when it's time for Christmas cookies.)

In total:

• 8 batches of cookies
• 6 lbs (or 24 sticks) of butter
• 40 cups of flour
• 16 cups of sugar
• 36 eggs

(and vanilla, baking soda, etc. with less impressive figures to report)

Did I mention I was out of town the two weekends preceding the wedding? Yep, so that meant lots of pre-planning and prep. I rolled out two batches over Labor Day weekend and a few later that week. I layered them between sheets of wax paper and stuck 'em in the freezer until earlier this week.

Cookies won over the freezer!

I took Thursday and Friday off work and spent several hours baking up the frozen batches (the recipe worked great and needed only an extra 2 minutes or so than usual). Earlier in the week I had rolled out two more batches and baked them up fresh since I knew it was too close to the deadline to freeze them. While the frozen ones were baking, I rolled out two more batches! I was still over 100 cookies shy of my target goal of 400 (plus extras in case of breakage, icing flubs, etc.). (Another note to self: two cookie sheets is not enough.)

Is there anything more delectable than a stack of cookies?

By Thursday evening, this was where I left off. Much further behind than I wanted to be!

Friday morning brought dueling KitchenAids. I borrowed my in-laws so I could make multiple batches of royal icing at a time. Somehow it still took me three hours to get it all done!

Thanks to the KitchenAids for sparing my arms from stirring.

Three hours for buckets of blue and red goo!

And it was done just in the nick of time because DawnMarie, my decorating diva, was here to help! She flooded those cookies like a champ!

This is when the first signs of "piping bag hand cramp" were setting in. Totally a real thing. I bet I could even diagnose it on the Internet.

When DMV left, I still had piles and piles of cookies to go. I put my head down and powered through and by the time Louis was home from work, I only had two containers to go! (I know, right? Only two containers was giving me motivation.)

Lucky for me, Louis let me put him to work so I didn't have to ice cookies until the wee hours of the morning.

He literally saved me HOURS of work. True love can be found in icing cookies.

This was the scene of our dining room, aka Hubbard House Bakery!

Every last cookie was iced by 10:30pm on Friday night--whew! Which left me to pack them up and get them ready for transport. Louis helped me deliver and set them up, too.

The wedding had a picnic theme, so I was happy to stumble across these large baskets. I bought a yard of teal gingham fabric to line the baskets. I was happy to see nearly all of the cookies fit.

 With a few spilling over to a turquoise tray I picked up just in case (and I'm glad I did!).

Whew! Did it! Number of cookies broken in transport: two. Not bad! I am relieved to have this all under my belt now.

Louis snapped this photo after the dessert had been served. I hope many more cookies were consumed late into the night!

I've already been asked if I'll ever make cookies again. Please, people, what kind of a question is that? I have a lot of leftover icing and I'm already thinking about whipping some up. And I love cookies too much to never bake them again--just not in quantities of 400. :)

It was a very fun experience and I'm glad I had the chance to do it. Happy wedding, Peggy and Tim! May you always have cookies.