BAKING AND DECORATING
Lucia, who mixes the icing colors for my own Drop In & Decorate party, has hosted an event at her workplace, the Sargent Rehabilitation Center in Warwick, RI, for the past two years. I asked her to share some tips for baking and decorating the cookies.
Ask colleagues to volunteer to bake one batch of the recipe. You don't have to do it all yourself!
Make sure there are large, suitable cookie cutters available; ask around all the colleagues to see what people have at home -- you may be able to form a temporary collection that way.
Or, invest in a set of cutters for the project and have people share them. One person brought in cookies that were too small and too thin, so we used them as practice/snack cookies.
It's important to find out which part of the process people are comfortable with, and match people up into teams if possible.
Because my event is for clients and staff, it is possible to schedule during work hours. I scheduled approximately 3 hours of decorating time on each of two days, and we got more than 100 cookies done. Our treatment schedule is in 30-minute blocks, so people came and went in 30-minute intervals. Some people stayed longer as helpers.
Logistics planning includes: a room with one or more large tables to work on, trays and location to store cookies while icing dries, and having all supplies on hand (including paper towels and clean-up supplies).
I use disposable white plastic table cloths taped to the table as a work surface. Because of the nature of our facility, everyone had to wear vinyl gloves. We have these on hand at all times so it wasn't a special purchase.
I borrowed a friend's KitchenAid mixer and prepared all the icing early one morning at work, but I could have done it the night before (or many days before) -- just store it in an airtight container at room temperature. I did the coloring and filled the pastry bags that morning, before the decorating started.
(You can also use squeeze bottles, which work especially well for kids. And you can let the kids or your co-workers help mix the icing colors.)
At the end of day one, I laid the bags flat in an airtight container, with damp paper towels around the tips, and refrigerated the icing. It kept the icing very well for the next day, and saved me a lot of work.
We have a petty cash budget that covered the cost of supplies. We also occasionally do small fundraisers (bake sale, etc.) so it's not a problem to have some cash on hand for expenses.
Previously:
Part I: Planning your event, finding a recipient agency
Coming next...
Part III: Wrapping, delivery, publicity
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