Eli carried his teacher's cookie plate into school this morning with both hands, eyes locked on the cellophane, walking like a man transporting something that might go off. He made it. Wyatt carried his under one arm like a football, and I've decided not to ask.
Three of our twelve plates went out this morning, counting the bus driver's. The rest go out this week, before school lets out on Friday. Every December I bake for the people who make our year run, and I've gotten the whole thing down to one Saturday, four kinds of cookies and $54.
Who gets a plate
- Wyatt's and Eli's teachers
- Rosie's two teachers at Mother's Day Out
- The preschool office, where I work
- The church office down the hall
- Mrs. Patterson next door
- The Nguyens across the street
- The Garzas down the block
- Our mail carrier
- The boys' bus driver
- Matt's crew at the warehouse
That's twelve. Matt's crew gets the biggest plate, because they start at 5:30 in the morning and there are a lot of them.
Four cookies, chosen on purpose
Each plate gets about sixteen cookies, four of each kind, so the whole bake is a little over sixteen dozen. I pick the four so they don't fight each other for the oven or for my attention.
- Sugar cookies, rolled and cut into stars and trees, iced by the kids. The dough is made the night before and chilled.
- Chocolate crinkles, rolled in powdered sugar. Also chilled overnight.
- Pecan sandies, made with pecans from our backyard tree, cracked in November.
- Peanut butter blossoms, with a chocolate kiss pressed into each one right out of the oven.
Because peanut butter is the big allergy worry, the blossoms go in their own small bag on each plate with a label, so nobody has to guess. I don't know who has an allergy at home, and it costs me nothing to keep them separate.
The baking day schedule
- Friday night: make the sugar cookie and crinkle doughs in the stand mixer, wrap them and chill.
- 7:30 a.m. Saturday: set up my station. Butter softening for the sandies and blossoms, all four half-sheet pans lined with parchment, cooling racks on the dining table, a cleared counter for rolling.
- 8:00: sugar cookies. Roll, cut, bake 9 minutes at 350, two pans at a time on two racks, rotating all four pans through.
- 9:30: crinkles, 10 minutes a pan.
- 10:30: mix and bake the sandies.
- 11:30: lunch, which was cookie scraps for everyone except Eli, who had a quesadilla.
- Noon: peanut butter blossoms. Wyatt presses in the kisses and eats roughly every fifth one.
- 1:00: icing at the kitchen table. Rosie is in charge of sprinkles. Her hands stayed sticky until bath time.
- 3:00: plating, cellophane, ribbon and name tags.
- 4:00: clean the kitchen. I clean as I go every other day of the year, but on cookie day there's no such thing as clean.
What went wrong, and what it cost
The crinkles. The first two pans spread into flat, crackled pancakes, because I'd pulled the dough out of the fridge and then spent ten minutes getting Rosie down off the learning tower and out of the powdered sugar. Warm dough spreads. I put the bowl back in the fridge for twenty minutes and the rest came out tall and round. The flat ones went into a tin for us, and Matt claims they're his favorite.
Ingredients were $46. The biggest line was butter, five pounds at $3.89, which is $19.45 by itself. Then flour, white and brown and powdered sugar, eggs, cocoa, a jar of peanut butter, a bag of chocolate kisses, vanilla and two jars of sprinkles. The pecans were free. Paper plates, cellophane and ribbon came to $8 more.
That's $54 for twelve plates, or $4.50 a plate. A store-bought tin for everyone on that list would cost more than that and say a lot less.
The mail carrier gets hers this afternoon. Mrs. Patterson's goes over after dinner, and she'll keep me on her porch for half an hour, which by now I plan for.
