A quick rundown of what I've been up to:
-I had my first HappyJack Chat demonstration at the Whitehall Public Library back in March where I showed a group of about 20 people how to make my pie crust.
-I was asked to come back and do a second HappyJack Chat, which is scheduled for June 29, 2011, where I'll be demonstrating how to make my Chocolate Chip Snowballs, as well as my refreshing strawberry pie.
-I've tried a new chocolate cake recipe, which turned out to be super yummy!
-I started making two kinds of pound cake: blueberry sour cream, and cranberry orange. While I won't be selling these at the market, they're available for special orders (delivery at the market) for $10 each.
-I'm pretty close to having a commercial kitchen to bake from for when I'm asked to do orders, wholesale, or weddings. Hopefully all of the paperwork will be in place by the end of June.
-I've added a new cookie to my offerings, replacing the confusingly named PBL Dreams. The new cookie is called Flourless PB&Cs (equally confusing), and is a flourless peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie. You'll be shocked at the texture, wondering how they taste so much like a normal cookie.
A quick rundown of what I'm doing to get ready for June 6, the first day of the market this year:
-I bought as many ingredients as I could to minimize my trips to the strip district.
-Consequently, I had to buy a shelving unit to store all of the hundreds of pounds of flour and sugar that I bought.
-Decided on a few new methods for selling my cookies each week, including offering one cookie each week as a single offering for 50¢ a piece.
-Checked in with my mom and mother-in-law to re-borrow the baskets and dishes I used to display my cookies last year, only to discover that I never returned them in the first place, and they were all still in my basement. My bad.
-Pre-mixed all of my cookie dough this weekend so that next weekend, all I have to do is bake. Last year, I sold almost twice as many packs of cookies on the first day as I did every other week, so I thought I should get a leg up and do some pre-mixing. If this method works and saves me some time, this will help me through the summer when I have two weddings to do, one week apart.
-I committed to not working on Sundays this year, except for packaging, which is a family affair in my house.
So that's about it. In another week, I'll be blogging about my first week of my second year at the market. I'm really excited about starting up again, and am hoping for another successful season. Oh, and I'm also looking forward to buying more produce from the other vendors this year since I cancelled my CSA subscription.
