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Sunday, March 2, 2008

I'm back!


spring cookies , originally uploaded by Flying Time Designs


After months of ignoring this blog I'm back and this time with a purpose. As explained in the newly edited "about me" section I've decided to use this blog to help keep myself on track, organized and motivated as I research and develop a plan to start my own gourmet/specialty cookie shop. It would be great if I could be up and running by Christmas but there's so much to do! We'll see…

One of the things on my "to do" list was to play with gumpaste and fondant. I had never worked with gumpaste before and had very little experience with fondant. (I've always decorated my cookies with royal icing. ) I've seen lots of really beautiful and fun things done with fondant and gumpaste so I wanted to know how to work with them. The picture above shows the results. Overall I'm pretty happy with the way these cookies turned out. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the cookies tasted with the fondant. The last time I worked with fondant, I think I used some store bought stuff…not very good, kinda tasteless. This time I made marshmallow fondant and I used corn syrup to stick it to the cookies. I can't say I liked the taste or texture of the fondant as much as the taste/texture of icing, but it tasted pretty good, especially considering all the fun things you can do/ the look that can be achieved with fondant. I tried to keep track of how long each step of this process took today:

It took me:
15 min. to mix the dough (I think. I didn't time this part)
45 min. to roll, cut and bake 3 1/2 dozen cookies and to clean up the mess afterward.
15 min. to make marshmallow fondant? (I didn't time this either)
1 hour to cover the 3 1/2 dz. cookies with the fondant
forever to make a bunch of gumpaste flowers (I spent a Sunday a couple of weeks ago working on these. It was the first time I'd worked with gumpaste and I spent a lot of time reading the directions in the Wilton book, but still…
45 min. to put flowers on 1 1/2 dozen of the cookies

This puts me at about 69minutes/ dozen without including the time spent making gumpaste flowers. So maybe…about 2 hrs/dz. with the flowers? Probably gonna have to work a lot faster than that to make a decent hourly wage even if I charge $30/dz. which is the price I have in mind. If there's any pros out there reading this, please tell me how long it takes you to make a dozen cookies and how you automate the process!

Speaking of automating the process, my dad found me a sweet deal on a used 2o quart mixer. Just got it this weekend so I haven't had a chance to play with it. Without a professional kitchen I really don't have room for it, but I couldn't pass it up so for now it sits in our garage. I guess I can add "scaling up my recipe" to my "to do" list and a kitchen scale to my "stuff to buy list"!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

These cookies are just way too pretty to eat!
Sarah
http://vintagelily.typepad.com/my_weblog/