With great ambitions at hand, we embarked on our cookie project with great fervour. But at 21, we forgot one key ingredient - looking ahead. We knew we wanted to bake cookies to sell but we forgot about the logistics planning involved. Never mind that. We took it one step at a time, with me hauling bags of flour, sugar, choco bits etc from my place in the north to hers in the west, a good one hour train ride away.
After a day's of baking, we still had dough left! So we continued the following day, with me hauling extra ingredients (just in case) to her place again. We now had red buckets of dough everywhere in the kitchen. There was the heavy rich smell of chocolate and cookies in the house. I smelled of dough and it lingered long after I left the house. Our little project seemed almost bordering on an industrial scale!
Baking a batch of cookies is well and good but try 1,000 cookies. Yes, at the end of the third day when we reached the end of the yellow crumbly road of chocolate and dough where we could go no more, we were faced with 1,000 odd round crunchy chocolatey goodness. But here's where another headache and a few more came hurling at us: how do we store them so that they maintain their freshness for us to sell them? And how are we going to find hungry buyers? More hauling and heaving was in store. We had found a solution in the form of airtight glass bottles, plus they were extremely affordable and helped kept costs down. Suffice to say, it was me again hauling bottles this time to house our scrumptious snacks. (Because we baked at her house, my friend did the major part of the cleaning and washing up, which is equally backbreaking work.)
By God's grace and the good faith of our loved ones, we managed to sell our cookies without a taste test to close friends and family. For 5SGD, one would get a decent and delicious batch of cookies with a bottle for keeps.
We didn't become overnight rich baking goddesses. But we now had some money, few hundreds to give away to a charity. But which one? The opportunity came about when we found out a local group for people with intellectual disabilities were planning a day out for their members. They were looking for someone to provide a nice dinner at the park where the activity was held. We said yes we can help. Short of simply giving them the money, we decided to buy the dinner ourselves and bring it there. Again we failed to realise the logistical challenge involved but managed to get the help required, by divine intervention I believed. We completed our month-long project and celebrated our 21st by keeping all the bakeware away, with a scrubbed down kitchen free of dough scraps and flour traces on the walls and floors. And we told ourselves, no more baking for now. For the next year, no more cookies too!
What turned out to be a simple project actually took much more effort, thankfully aided by helpful family along the way. But for two crazy friends, it makes turning 21 a helluva more fun when we accomplished something together.
Tty your hand at baking cookies for sale. Admittedly it's quite tiring especially when you're baking big batches. Start small, 100 perhaps. And plan ahead - get your friends and family involved and don't be afraid to ask for help. We did. Looking back, it seemed like a crazy, ambitious idea but we were 21 and we threw caution to the wind and achieved it. You can too, at 21 or 51.
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