Monday, December 18th, 2006

CookieFest 2006

posted by lizzie    « 5 Comments »    tied to Uncategorized   

By way of introduction, two years ago my roommates Jodie and Dorian gave me a Christmas cookies recipe book. Micah and I were engaged then, and since we were moving to Hawaii just a few weeks later, we decided to make hundreds of cookies for the going-away party we were throwing for ourselves. A tradition was born. This was CookieFest’s third year and it was the biggest and best yet.

We started by choosing six different cookie recipes from the book and then deciding whether we would need to double or triple the recipe to get the right amount of cookies. We added up how much flour, sugar, eggs, butter, etc. we would need to pull off this stunt, and listed other ingredients we would need to buy. By Friday night we were ready to roll and by eight o’clock we had three of the doughs made. I was hoping to get at least four made, but just as I was finishing the third one, the power went out and didn’t come back on until almost 11:00. But we were back at it with a vengence at 9:00 Saturday morning and at 10:30 Saturday night we pulled the last batch out of the oven. We took a short lunch break and a slightly longer running break, so all in all we spent about 3 hours on Friday and 12 hours on Saturday in the kitchen baking cookies. This includes the time spent saving the half-prepared plates from attacking ants who seemed to have a thing for poppy seeds. Luckily, Micah caught the problem before it got out of hand and only three cookies were lost. Unluckily, the plates were lying on our bed at the time (there wasn’t anywhere else to put them). I think the ants were all gone by the time we went to sleep, though. *sigh* We love Hawaiian bugs.

Here is CookieFest 2006, by the numbers:
Flour: 33 cups
Butter: 10 1/4 cups
Sugar: 9 3/4 cups
Eggs: 13
Candied cherries Micah had to carve the pit out of: too many
Total hours spent: 15
Plates made: 25
Cookies made: 500 (approximately)
Size of the kitchen in which this was all done in: tiny (as evidenced by the pictures–notice the utter lack of counter space.)
Things we don’t even want to think about: how many times we washed the two pans we own, how many degrees we let into the kitchen by opening the oven door, how high our energy bill is going to be.

But the tradition lives on and now we get to spread our Christmas Cheer to all of our friends out here. For those of you who don’t get to taste the cheer, at least you get to see it.

Merry Christmas to All!

Comments

  1. Jodie says:
    December 18, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    Very fun! And awesome. And I’m glad you’ve put that book to good use!

    It was my intention to make a boatload of cookies this year, too. But, it never happened. There’s always next year, right? :)

  2. Jodie says:
    December 18, 2006 at 5:04 pm

    I just read your post again…2 cookie sheets??!?! 15 hours??! Oy, sounds purely exhausting! They do look very tasty, though. Maybe you could send some to us. :)

  3. elizabeth says:
    December 18, 2006 at 6:35 pm

    We were very tired by the end. And my legs were so swollen from standing all day. I felt like I suddenly had elephant legs. Blah.

  4. Sarah says:
    December 19, 2006 at 5:34 am

    How do you two even move around in that kitchen? Also, I think you guys should sell your cookie pictures to cookie advertisers. If there are any. Anywhere. Ever.

  5. kareena says:
    December 21, 2006 at 3:20 am

    Thanks for sharing your cookies with me(and my roomies!) They were absolutely delicious…and when I got home to eat more of them, there were only two and a half left! I love the cookie tradition! You are amazing!

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