The Santa saga

I know I already talked about it, but I wanted to SHOW the work that goes into these gosh darned Santas. Someone ordered 7 dozen cookies from us last week and, when they had come in to look at what we had to offer, had seen the Santas and specifically requested that those be part of the 7 dozen.

Now, this is almost step-by-step. I skipped photographing a few steps every now and then along the way (like where Santa's suit goes from being just a red outline to being totally red AND having the first part of his arm done--there's drying time between those two steps). But just take a look, and remember that between each of these steps is about 30-45 of drying time (if not more) to try to keep it clean. Takes foreeeeeeever.

So, without further ado, the Creation of The Santa:

And there he is--all done and ready to go out! (Until you come in the next day and find that the red has bled into the white and the black had bled into the red and have to do some emergency cover-ups....oh, the epic joys of royal icing...)

Dipping v. outlining-and-filling

So, first of all, the invitation ornaments. With their phone number blanked out--I don't just have weird spots like that on my cookies, I swear. :-)

In other news...recently, one of our suppliers showed us a recipe and a technique for dipping cookies instead of outlining and flooding. Now, I still prefer the outlining and flooding technique because, in general, it produces a sharper, cleaner look to the edge of the cookie.

These little suckers were dipped in the red, rather than using the outline and fill technique. See those bottom edges there? They make me cringe. And they make me worry at night when I'm trying to go to sleep. I kid you not. Cookie anxiety--it's a real problem, people, and the only solution is to raise awareness and find a cure. :-)

So far, the cure consists of practice and experimenting with this stuff. It's awful--I mean as far as a product to work with. It tastes fine. I swear. Please keep buying my cookies. :-)

But when it gets mixed up (it uses a special kind of sugar), the consistency is kind of like a thick, gloppy glue. And then you have to heat it and thin it down to a dipping consistency. So, more high maintenance than a simple royal icing. And if the consistency isn't juuuuust right--drips. Drips all over the place.

HOWEVER, we're learning as we go! Take a look at these trees--not bad, right? They were dipped!

We learned that the simpler the shape, the more successful we are at getting the icing to stay on the cookie. And sprinkles on top of wet icing? Not a good idea--pushes the icing right off the side. I'm sure there's some scientific explanation, but I'm going to go with, "sprinkles are heavy." We have to let the base dry, then put on sprinkles with royal icing afterward.

The bottom line is...well, our bottom line. We have to have sure that we can supply the product being demanded of us and make a profit doing so. And once we get a few people who can master the technique, this is a much more efficient way of getting the base color on the cookies. It goes on faster and dries to the touch quicker than royal icing, allowing us to get through more in less time. And when we have 500+ cookies going out a week, efficiency is our friend, so long as we can balance that with pretty.

Because I refuse to send out not-pretty cookies.

Christmas cookies

I imagine this will be the first of multiple Christmas-themed posts. Our pastry chef found the Elf and Santa ornaments at Williams-Sonoma and brought them in to see how they baked up. They're definitely cute, but boy-howdy do they take some time to decorate.

Santa here consisted of multiple steps. I had to outline the different parts in the different colors, but couldn't do all the outlining at once, lest the colors bleed into each other, so that took some time. And then there was the experiment of creating that arm holding the bag out of icing. I had to let the red fill of his coat dry, then do a chunky line for the first part of the arm. Then I had to let THAT dry before adding the forearm. And then THAT dry before tacking on the hand holding the bag. So, this one definitely won't be a regular in our rotation. Not cost-effective. But he's available for special order!

Then we have his elf who was only slightly less time-consuming. And that darn face. I couldn't figure out a way to make it look any less cartoon-y. But still, available for order if he floats your boat!

And then we have the ornaments. Oh, how I love the ornaments. They fall just below snowflakes as my favorite. There's just SO much you can do with them.

For example, I had a woman order 30 of these with a sugar sheet on top to where they were turned into invitations to her Christmas party. And all the info was right there on the cookie. I'll definitely have to see if I can find one of the sample cookies I did and take a photo.

These are so fun. One of my bosses ordered a stencil that you just lay over the (dry) iced cookies, and you just swipe some buttercream over it. Lift it off and...ta da! The unfortunate part is that our bakery's awesome Italian meringue buttercream doesn't crust over like some other buttercreams. So if I want to do this in the future, I'll have to whip up a special batch of the kind that gets hard after awhile (American buttercream, made with shortening, if I'm not mistaken) to make them shelf-stable. Otherwise, they smudge waaaay too easily (see on the right hand cookie down near the bottom?).

And I tried to sub in some white royal icing rather than buttercream....yeah, not so much. It comes out a lot messier and less pretty.