Community Cookie Contest!

generikat (68)in #life • 6 years ago

Food! Sweet, Delectable Food In The Library!

Last year @jacobtothe and I were ruminating on events that would engage and draw in the adults in our community. We thought a cookie contest sounded kind of cool, participants could enter a couple of dozen of their favorite cookies, the public could vote on their favorite, and we librarians could do all the facilitating of said contest, including offering up a sweet prize!

The library's community cookie contest was born!

Last year we had enough entries and success with the inaugural contest that we decided to hold it again, and this year we had double the entrants!

We also had double the normal patrons to deal with, and as it was a Saturday, there were only two of us on staff. Trying to manage all the logistics of a cookie contest and run a library full of people is kind of a suspenseful novel, but we handled it!

My main job was the cutting of the entries in half. Of course I had to engage in a bit of quality control, and sampled every variety. I care about my community.

Entries ready for presentation and judging, @jacobtothe and I placed them onto numbered papers on a table. There are never any shortages in potential cookie judges when we hold the contest, so we feel like the "community" offered up a fairly well rounded opinion.

Also offered for our judges were drinks consisting of the coffee, milk, and hot cider varieties. Aside from the contented crunching heard round the library, there were some very serious discussions regarding texture and flavor.

I had my hands full trying to verify a potential new patron's proof of address while keeping the cookie plates stocked for our judges, so the hour that the contest was on blew by like milk from an over-exuberant toddler's nose. At two o'clock sharp JT took the ballots back and tallied up the votes.

I had already decided what cookie was my favorite. Among the eight entries there were two types of chocolate chip cookies, two types of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, a tiger cookie made with frosted flakes, a peppermint cream cheese cookie that was dyed a marvelous shade of green, a sugar cookie with sprinkles, and a classic Irish shortbread with chocolate drizzle.

I bake. A LOT! And with that experience has come a bit of knowledge concerning the way baked goods are supposed to taste. Although all of the cookies were good and I was so thankful for everyone's participation, during my quality control "check" I had made a few observations. There was an over-cooked entry, an entry that wasn't chilled in the dough stage properly, a too liberal of application of cinnamon, a not near enough salt, a texture problem, the list goes on. My absolute favorite, and I thought textbook perfect cookie was the Irish shortbread. Crisp, yet buttery, it quite literally melted when it hit your mouth. Apparently the patrons thought so too, for that cookie won. My other favorites, the tiger cookie and giant oatmeal chocolate chip cookie finished in the top of the pack, and like I intimated early, none of the cookies were by any means bad, I would know, for I ate more than a few...

We notified the winner, and she posed for a picture with her prize, a giant Pyrex mixing bowl with cookie making accessories and a most excellent cookie cook book. She publicly thanked her grandmother for inventing the recipe and we thanked her for participating.

A bit of table wiping and vacuuming later the library was back to its bookish state, and the rest of the opening hours were pretty quiet. However, I did make a couple of teenager's day by giving them two full plates of cut up cookies leftover from the contest. The dinner of champions that was!

We'll probably do the cookie contest again next year, for it's always a fun time interacting with the community, and most everyone enjoys free sweets and potential prizes!

And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's cookie crumb encrusted iPhone.