Cookies were more than dessert... they were the main course last weekend when Lisa and Champe Speidel, owners of Persimmon in Bristol, Rhode Island, hosted the first restaurant-based Drop In & Decorate® event. I asked Lisa to tell us about it:
I've been to a couple of Drop In & Decorate® Cookies-for-Donation events at founder, cookie maven and dear friend Lydia Walshin's house, and am a proud board member of the new nonprofit, but I had never hosted a party myself.
That all changed this past Sunday when my husband and I hosted a cookie decorating party in our restaurant's kitchen. We baked 200 cookies, a task headed up by our awesome kitchen crew, and invited forty friends and customers (most of whom came!) to decorate.
We reached out to the East Bay Coalition for the Homeless (the only agency in our area providing services for homeless families with children) as our recipient organization. When I received a thank-you note from Executive Director Diane Smith before the event even took place, I knew we had chosen an amazing organization to collaborate with.
The event was a huge success. Here are a few fun (and perhaps helpful) things I learned that I hope inspire others:
* The brighter the frosting, the better. When a friend described the yellow as "psychedelic," I knew we were on the right track.
* The more frosting, the better; next time I'm going to weigh a cookie or two.
* Everybody loves pig-shaped cookies, and tie-dye pigs taste as good as pink ones.
* It's always the people who say "I can only stay for 15 minutes" who end up staying for two hours. We love those people!
* Decorating cookies may be the most under-appreciated competitive sport, in a fun, my-little-black-cookie-dress-rocks kind of way.
* Lastly, if you're considering hosting a cookie decorating event, DO IT. Think about it: good friends, amazing cause, sugar high. It doesn't get better than that.
The youngest cookie decorator!
Special thanks to Lisa and Champe, to co-organizers Nicole and Nicky, and to all of the wonderful women who came and decorated cookies, and who generously contributed more than $300 to Drop In & Decorate.
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