How I structure my sugar cookie bakes for the week.
When I started my cookie bakery I used to lose sleep over if I’d have enough time to bake, decorate and package all of my cookies in time for Saturday morning pick-ups. I thought since they were picking up on Saturday in order to ensure the cookies were as fresh as possible I needed to bake and decorate all within a small 2 day window.
But with the help of my Worlds Best Sugar Cookie Recipe (linked here) and a little strategic planning I no longer stay up until Midnight on Friday nights hoping to cram all my work into one night. Instead I use a strategy called “batch working” and break up my work load into specific groups of tasks through out the week to make my workload more manageable.
So I want to walk you through my process in hopes that it might help you too ! So for this example will be how I structure my week for a Friday Cookie Pick-up.
Monday- I bake all my cookies for the week so if I have 3 orders that week everything will get baked and ready to decorate on Mondays.
Tuesday- I mix all my icing and flood the base of my cookies. Once everything is flooded I will re-mix any flood consistency icing that I need for detail to work into a thicker consistency and have it prepped and ready for Wednesday.
Wednesday- Finish up all detail work (at this point your cookies should be totally done) so that they can dry overnight and be ready for packaging day on Thursday.
Thursday- Is heat-seal and packaging day. *Don’t forget to snap a photo of all your hard work to put on your website/ social media.
Friday- Pick-up Day
By batching my orders by task instead each individual order it helps me reduce waste from over prepping dough to icing. It also saves time by completing all the like tasks together so I only have to bust out my rolling pin once a week and only have to mix icing colors once a week (thank goodness). This strategy also helps you reuse icing from one order to the next (wahoo!)
As a new baker I was so worried that starting this early in the week would effect the freshness of my cookies. But remember their are bakers selling their cookies on etsy and shipping them half way across the country. The transit time for those cookies is a week and that doesn’t even count bake and prep time.
Also having confidence in your recipe is key to this strategy. That’s why I love my recipe… seriously I found one that had been lost in my car from a pop-up for 6 weeks and it was still tasty … I’d say 3 weeks past its prime but still delicious.
So if you’re worried about freshness 1. make sure your recipe is a good one ( steal mine here) 2. Make sure you’re packaging your cookies with a heat sealer. It is well worth the $40 you’ll spend. Learn more about how to package your cookies Here. And if you’re still not confident I want to encourage you to do a little cookie science. Save an extra cookie or two and taste test them 1 week after packaging….. 2 weeks after packaging and see what the quality is like.
Batch working has really helped me reduce the amount of time I spend doing multiple tasks over and over again and if you’re a baker that is doing any intricate decorating I want to encourage you to try this system out for yourself !