Teresa’s Bake Shop – Christmas Cookie edition – 2012
Christmas cookie baking is finally finished for our family for 2012. I thought I would take you through the process of how we bake, package, and ship off cookies all over the country. We baked 35 different cookies in the past five to six weeks– all of which have already been posted.
This is a labor of love for our family. It is also one way we take our hospitality ministry to others. We’ve been baking Christmas cookies for family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, church friends, seminary staff, doctors and other service providers since the first year of our marriage when we couldn’t afford to do anything else for family but bake cookies! It has expanded to what it is now. I think we baked about 7,000 or 8,000 cookies packed in 140-150 containers (trays, popcorn tins, and buckets) in 2012. This year we included a couple thousand cookies for delivery at one of the prisons in Texas and for our church’s holiday fine arts and music gala in addition to our regular deliveries.
Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the pictures. It is quite a spectacle. I will tell you that after baking all this stuff every day for almost six straight weeks I am exhausted and resting for the rest of the year! Enjoy!
Christmas Cookie Extravaganza Production
Here are some of the tins and buckets we filled with Christmas cookies and bars this year.
Here’s one of my work tables set up in the dining room. We use a lot of really large mixing bowls and baker-style cookie sheets. In the background is our heat-sealer and the roll of poly bags we use to bag all our cookies.
Here’s a close up of our heat sealer and the roll of bags. I used over 5,000 bags and we had at least a thousand cookies that we didn’t bag.
I have two other 8 foot tables in my dining room set up with racks to bring in all the trays after baking.
I like the larger racks the best.
This is my dining room table laden down with all the baking goods. This doesn’t include everything we used because eggs, butter, cream cheese, etc., had to be refrigerated. Plus we had to purchase a whole lot more sugar, flour, nuts, and other stuff. But this gives you an idea of what goes into our Christmas Cookie Extravaganza every year.
Here’s another look.
Another look at all our baked goods.
Look at all this yummy stuff.
Another look.
We go through a lot of supplies baking this much stuff.
Here, I’ve placed one of the Orange Creamsicle Cookies in a poly bag.
Here I’ve started to stack the bagged cookies on a tray.
Here the tray is loaded and ready for each one to be individually sealed.
Here’s another picture of the Orange Creamsicle Cookies ready to be sealed.
I press the poly bag under the heat sealer and wait a few seconds until the light goes off indicating that the bag is sealed.
Here’s a sealed bag.
Here’s a large roaster pan filled with Orange Creamsicle Cookies.
This was packing day. I froze the first 15 of the 35 cookies I baked and then pulled them all out on this day to pack. These are Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Cookies.
Here I’ve got a lot of the cookies stacked on my island and counters around the kitchen. The cookies closest to us are the Chocolate Rainbow Sprinkle Cookies. Opposite them are Peanut Blossoms.
Here’s a look at some of the cookies on one of my counters. Pumpkin Whoopie Pies are closest.
Here’s another view. Snickers Bar Blondies are on the right. Pumpkin Whoopie Pies are on the left.
The cookies in front of my toaster oven are Apricot Cream Cheese Cookies.
Here I’ve started packing the popcorn tins. They can hold 80-100 cookies and brownies. I usually back brownies on the bottom because they absorb the weight best without cracking. Here are Snickers Bar Blondies on the bottom.
Here I’m filling up the tins.
Here the tins are filled with the 15 different kinds of cookies I baked for this part of our Christmas Cookie Extravaganza. You can see the Coconut Date Balls and Pumpkin Whoopie Pies on top. I took the whoopie pies to several parties. Everybody loved them.
Here’s a look at some of the buckets and trays. We put a copy of all our recipes in the buckets, tins, and cookie trays.
Here are some more of the cookie trays.
Here’s another look at some of the filled tins and buckets.
Here’s another look. I filled another 30 buckets for our prison ministry.
Here’s a look at the trays after John has added a strong cellophane wrap.
My Dessert Tables at our church’s Fine Arts and Music Gala
Here’s a look at one of my dessert tables. My Chocolate Potato Chip Sandwiches were a real hit even though they were my “reject cookies!” When folks tasted the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Whoopie Pies they started raving about how spectacular they were.
The Blueberry Gooey Butter Cake dessert bars were also a real hot item. The Chocolate Crinkles and the Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies were also snapped up pretty quickly.
Everyone drooled over my Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies, Chocolate Layer Bars, and the Double Chocolate Oatmeal Sandwiches.
I accidentally left the Apricot Almond Bars and Pecan Treats at home. My sweet husband drove back home and retrieved them. Good thing, because they were drooled over quite a bit too.
Another look.
In the background the Pecan Cheesecake Bars and Cranberry Lemon Sandwiches were also thought quite fantastic by those who stopped by my tables. Those who sampled the Chocolate Layer Bars had this huge smile come over their faces after tasting a bite of these amazing treats.
Everyone who tried one of the Potato Chip Cookies, Mimi’s Potato Chip Cookies or Black Forest Cookies thought they were amazing!
All of the leftovers went out to John’s place of employment where he took a few more trays to offices and left the rest in the break room where he made quite a few people smile!
Here are the 35 lovely cookies we made this year:
White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies
Chocolate Rainbow Sprinkle Cookies
Reese’s Peanut Butter Chip Chocolate Cookies
White Chocolate and Cranberry Cheesecake Cookies
Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Whoopie Pies
Double Chocolate Oatmeal Sandwiches
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars
Chocolate Potato Chip Sandwiches
I hope you’ll consider trying out some of these delicious cookies and bars for your holiday baking this year!
Related articles
- December 4 is National Cookie Day!!! (bluemountain.com)
- Cookies 101: Pinteresting Cookie Recipes for Christmas (sociableblog.com)
- Christmas Cookies… (foodiefriendsfridaydailydish.com)
- Baking Christmas cookies with the family. – View on Path. (mgalligan.com)
Teresa, WOW! You are amazing. I also do baking but it does not hold a candle to you. I may have missed the details but How much helped did you have? When did you get started? Did you freeze all the cookies? If so, did all of them freeze well? Again, you are amazing and encouraging to all of us. I know so many people were blessed this Christmas by your hard work and kind heart. Blessings and Enjoy your Christmas, Diane Roark (I posted about my blog award today.)
Okay, I will try to answer in order of your questions.
1) I did 95% of the baking myself.
2) John made the Pecan Treats, Cranberry Nut Swirls, and rolled the Coconut Date Balls in the coconut for me. I did EVERYTHING else this year. (Normally he does at least 50%, but he was busy with work and I decided to do a little bit every day for about 6 weeks).
3) I froze all of the cookies except the Chocolate Potato Chip Cookies and the Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies. I refrigerated them instead because I was going to use them a day or two after baking but they would have frozen well.
4) Remember we bag most of the cookies and freeze them but about 12-15 of the cookies I stacked on trays, wrapped in plastic wrap and froze without being bagged first.
5) all the cookies do really well freezing them first. I have a large upright freezer and two garage refrigerators with freezers plus my freezer in the kitchen. I barely had room for the first 15 cookies we made that we were packing off for family and friends. Then after that was emptied out I had room to freeze all the stuff for the prison ministry and our fine arts music gala at church.
6) baking cookies and giving them away is our way to say thanks to friends, family, coworkers, etc. and it usually is an encouragement to them.
I know this sounds kooky but I consider food (hospitality) my ministry. A lot of people would be freaked out by cooking or baking on the scale that I do, but God has given me the capacity (with his help) to do this without getting too stressed out most of the time. I had one melt down during Christmas cookie baking but after talking it through with my husband everything was better after that!
P.S. I read your kind words posted in your blog today. Thank you so much. I know you have a full plate but I hope you don’t get so discouraged that you stop blogging. You really are a blessing to others whether you realize it or not.
God really has given you a ministry and you are great at it. I really pray that he continues to bless you, your ministry, and your blog RICHLY this coming year. I am very organized so I really enjoyed you talking about the details. I know you have to be organized to pull off such a huge ministry. Blessings, Diane http://www.recipesforourdailybread.com
Thanks for your kind and generous words. I appreciate you.
Wow, what you have managed to do is amazing. All the people that receive these cookies are very lucky, you clearly have a big heart! Happy Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful time, you deserve a rest!
Thank you. We love doing it every year, and yes, we are enjoying a great rest!
P.S. It’s been almost a week since I’ve baked cookies so I’m ready to get back in there again! Only no one to bake for now! But I am enjoying making Christmas desserts!
Wow!! You are definitely the Super Woman Baker!! Very impressive my dear
You are spectacular!!
Merry Christmas! And I wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday
Well, I don’t think I’m “super woman” but thanks so much for the compliments. You have been such a strong supporter. I really appreciate your encouragement so much.
I love making desserts and especially making them for others. I’m making two right now at my mother-in-laws! Posts to follow later! Yee haw!
Just in case you are interested, we get our bags from Uline (www.uline.com). We use the Autobag 4″x5″ 1.5 mil bags on a roll and use an 8″ impulse sealer. The bags are perforated and we have a rack that holds the spool of bags. Makes it very quick and easy to bag most items. We also keep some larger flat bags for some of those cookies that morph into irregular shapes or sizes that don’t fit.
I used to work for an arts and crafts distributor many years ago and these are the same sealers and bags we would use for bagging beads and jewelry supplies.
As Teresa has said, individual bagging allows us lots of flexibility in preparation, freezing and shipping. The people on the receiving end love the concept and we always get great feedback.
Cookie machine! Job well done.
Thanks! It was fun while it lasted but I’m glad to be done!
I love it! Now this is my kind of baking – BIG! The individually wrapped cookies are brilliant, as I tend to skip soft cookies that will dry out, but this is genius. I’ll be going through your recipes more closely after Christmas and will give some a try. Thanks for your great documentation of this fantastic project! Well done!
You’re welcome. We hoped it would be helpful to others.The bags really help protect the cookies from drying out, getting spoiled, or crumbling too much.
Reblogged this on Urban Farm Foodista.
That is a lot of cookies. wow. How well does the heat sealer work? I was looking at buying one of those, but they had mixed reviews on-line.
Ours works great and the cookies stay fresh for a long time.
Oh. My. Goodness. I am in awe, oh-queen-of-the-kitchen! I feel kind of tiny right now–actually, really tiny…teensy tiny…itty bitty…microscopic…invisible to the eye
Why? You do such amazing gourmet-type stuff I could never do! But thank you for the compliment.
Well deserved compliment, Teresa. And what a blessing you are. I hope your Christmas is as beautiful as you’ve made others’.
Thanks!