I hope you did. But I sincerely apologize to those who didn't. The frosting was homemade, by yours truly, because I thought store-bought frosting would be impersonal. Plus, I like to know what's in my food and there's too many indecipherable ingredients in those tubs of goo at the grocery store. It's also significantly less expensive to make it myself, although it takes a lot more time. And that's where I ran into a snag. First of all, I didn't know how much frosting to make. Based on estimates from last year, I thought that 4 pounds of frosting for the first day would be enough. I was wrong. My first batch was all but gone in just four hours. So, I gathered more ingredients and went home to make more. I used up everything I had and returned at 5pm only to watch half of what I'd just made disappear into stressed-out student tummy's before we called it a night. Then the responsibilities of being a student and a mommy came up. By the time I got home, put my son to bed, and finished a 15 page paper on sequencing a chloroplast genome, it was very late and I needed sleep. I just didn't have time to make more frosting before I hit the ground running the following morning. I'm sorry.
We (the student ambassadors and staff) were stunned by the popularity of the cookies and unfortunately underestimated how much we would need. It only took 8 hours (7 hours on Tuesday, and 1 hour on Wednesday) for students and staff to devour 400 cookies, and about 10 pounds of frosting! But seeing the joy on faces as they slathered their cookies and plopped a few gummy bears on top was priceless. I could see the stress drain out of students when they entered the atrium and found free food awaiting them. This "End-of-Semester-Cookie-Break" was a definite hit and we'll do it again, but with more supplies.
Of all the flavors, the Mocha reigned supreme. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised given the caffeine content of most student's on campus. But it's an interesting story how I came to make that particular flavor. You can thank a fellow student (but I don't know his name) who several days ago gave me a small individual serving packet of instant coffee from Starbuck's, which I tossed in my purse and forgot about. See, I'm not a coffee drinker, but I thought it might come in handy in an emergency so I kept it. When I was brainstorming ingredients to flavor my frosting concoctions I remembered it and mixed it in to half of the first chocolate batch. The problem was that it was so popular that I couldn't bear to not make more, but I had already used the only packet I had. So, I'll have you know that I went to Starbuck's and got more. But you can't just buy one. I'm now the proud owner of 13 more of those little packets of caffeine and am thinking they'll make good stocking stuffers for Christmas.
In closing, I hope you all do well on your finals and get just what you want from Santa!
No comments:
Post a Comment