cookie dough

WE SURVIVED THE COOKIE DOUGH FUNDRAISER!

I SURVIVED THE [FIRST] COOKIE DOUGH FUNDRAISER!
whew.

I had never done a fundraiser like this before. For work we do a week long bake sale for bus passes [we purchase our own bus passes to help patients get home after a visit to the ER], but this was nothing like that.

My expectations were basically that it was going to be this fun experience: my girlfriends were going to come and help me [yay!], and we were going to raise about $400-500 [eee!] for Ama. That felt like a good number to settle on. I'm no sales-person, but I can totally sell 10-15 orders of 5 kinds of cookies. I HAVE SAMPLES TO HELP ME, AFTER ALL. Each order was $12 for 24 cookies. I can totally do that. I'd hit up my co-workers and out on my personal social media for about a week. 💪🏽

Goals fly out windows sometimes.

On the first day I opened up cookie dough sales, orders trickled in for a few hours. Then they rolled in. Then my armpits got all sweaty and my heart started pounding and I started freaking out.

I talked it out with Kate and Meagan and Michelle and Jessica and Marissa and Sarah and Bea and Sarah and Rach and Ama and Nicole and Erin. I'm a verbal processor. It was panicking and rambling and setting boundaries and changing expectations. We decided to cut off orders at 40 per cookies.

FORTY.

I love math. Have we talked about this? I looooooove it. I used to do augmented matrices for fun in high school when other people were playing tetris on their graphing calculator. #noshameinmynerdgame

40 orders x 24 cookies x 5 types  = 4800 COOKIES!

HOLY CRAP.

We closed orders Sunday morning. Orders opened on the previous Friday night. We maxed out in less than 72 hours.

I waved goodbye to the fun Saturday I had in my head where we sang Christmas songs and caught up on each others' lives and ate snacks.

Before all this started I made a practice round of each cookie. A half batch to tell me how many cookies a full batch would make and how much it would cost in ingredients. I whipped up strawberry white chocolate chip cookies, browned butter all the chips cookies, salted chocolate chip cookies, ginger-molasses cookies, and oatmeal cream pies. All the cookies were frozen for 3-5 days to see how they baked after freezing. I broke down how much an ounce of flour cost and how many ounces were in each recipe. Every ingredient was priced and split and calculated so that we could know how much profit we'd make if we charged $8 vs $10 vs $12 per order. 

Armed with my cookie research, I did the actual math for what we'd need to fill the actual cookie orders. 

And promptly freaked out again. 

HOW IN THE WORLD COULD WE NEED THIS MUCH STUFF??? I had 100% believed I would be purchasing from Aldi, Kroger, and maybe [maybe] Costco. 

Yeah. No. 

When you need 344 sticks of butter, 104 cups of sugar, 127 cups of brown sugar, 250 cups of AP flour, 33 cups of 60% chocolate chips, 222 tablespoons of molasses, and all the other ingredients...you're past shopping at Aldi and Kroger. 

We had our big workday on Saturday, Dec 8 and I have never been more grateful for good friends willing to dive in for my not-so-little dream. A total of 12 people worked for about 10 hours in a church basement making and scooping and freezing and packaging these little balls of love for our dear Ama. 

I got to deposit $1800 into the Ama's Army crowd fund. CAN I TELL YOU HOW GRATEFUL I AM TO MY COMMUNITY? MY BOMB CO-WORKERS MADE UP ALMOST HALF OF THE ORDERS. 😘 MY FAMILY? MY FRIENDS OF FRIENDS? MY FAMILY OF FRIENDS? I'm happy to say that she gets to have a little less to worry about because of people who ordered and gave and helped and supported us. 💜💜💜

I'll be blogging the recipes for each cookie [with all my personal little tips/tricks/changes] here in the next few weeks.
-Brown Butter All the Chips

-Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

-Strawberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies [it's in the archives already, friends!]

-Ginger-Molasses Cookies

-Oatmeal Cream Pies