It's taken two weeks to recap my holiday baking because I'm still recovering from all of it! I had an overly ambitious idea this fall to send boxes of cookies to friends around the country as well as to my dear grandmother who did the same for me in college. So technically, it's all her fault.
Because of the overwhelming scope, I made a plan. I made a list of recipients and whittled it down to a manageable number - 16. I found perfect plastic containers at the local grocery store which were thriftier than buying new tins. I measured the tubs to determine the boxes I would need for shipping and ordered them from USPS.com in what I thought was plenty of time. More on that later, on to the baking.
I broke the baking into 2 segments - shipments & out of town deliveries vs. local deliveries. I knew I had to get my shipments out by a specific date so they would arrive well before Christmas. I chose three types of cookies (down from 6, plus fudge and/or candied pecans, like I said, I was very ambitious at the start) - Gingersnaps, the classic Iced Sugar Cookie, and everyone's favorite Chocolate Chip. All Grandma's recipes, all time-tested and taste bud approved. To fill the first 10 tubs for shipment, I made double batches of the gingersnaps and chocolate chips and a single batch of the sugars because that makes a ton of cookies. After filling the tubs, I realized I probably could have added one more variety but I just didn't have time. I baked the cookies over the course of a week, as well as a batch of pumpkin bread to fulfill a Secret Santa obligation.
At the very latest, I wanted to send the boxes out 2 weeks before Christmas itself, to ensure delivery. This is where the postal service failed me. The boxes I ordered were free, and the website said they would be delivered within 7-10 business days of the order. I even got an email notification when they were shipped but the notice offered nothing as a means of tracking my shipment. I received that notice a week before I wanted to send them out, so I thought I was well on my way to making this work. As the baking week progressed, the boxes didn't come. I took a partial day from work to start a long holiday weekend and the boxes hadn't arrived. So I loaded all of the tubs in the trunk and headed home for a weekend with the family. I ended up taking the tubs to the UPS store and paying 3x what I would have paid at the post office. By that point, I was so upset I didn't care - I felt like I was protesting the post office. Ultimately, I shipped 8 boxes since one was delivered en route to my parents to my college roommate and the other went to my brother & his wife.
The next round of baking was much less hectic as I didn't have a set deadline. I wanted to deliver over the weekend before Christmas, so I just needed to get things finished by the weekend. I think I did actual do a batch of cookies on Saturday morning, and delivered that evening. Having learned the capacity of the tubs, I decided to include 4 varieties of cookies and I changed things up a bit since they didn't need to be sturdy enough to handle shipping - Gingersnaps, Iced Sugar, Pressed Sugar (they crumble if you look at them funny, but boy, are they yummy!), and Martha's Grammy's Chocolate. The yields of the various batches worked well enough that each tub had a few more than a dozen of each type with a little room to spare. That iced sugar recipe turns out so many cookies - I tried to use similar sized cutters to keep baking even - that I had quite a few of those left. So I brought 2 tubs to work and the remainder went to friends.
Not wanting to waste those left over cookies, I made good on a promise and delivered those as well as a Christmas Eve batch of chocolate chip cookies to my favorite fire station. Those were very well received. It wasn't until the end of my visit with them that I saw the pile of goodies they had in the kitchen. If that shift didn't eat them all, I'm sure the next shift didn't mind the leftovers!
I tried to summarize the amounts of butter, flour and sugar that I used during this after the fact but I can't process that right now. I'll try to do better next year and keep a tally as I go. Best estimates were around 4 pounds of butter, 10 pounds of flour and 12 pounds of sugar, but that's just a guess.
I tried to summarize the amounts of butter, flour and sugar that I used during this after the fact but I can't process that right now. I'll try to do better next year and keep a tally as I go. Best estimates were around 4 pounds of butter, 10 pounds of flour and 12 pounds of sugar, but that's just a guess.
Now I'm considering shipping cookies to soldiers overseas. I'm a glutton for punishment.
