Cookie Origami

I get two question a lot: Why is boxing so difficult and why I make my cookies so small. Well they are related. Let's start with the size.

If you have been getting them for more than a year-you know that you want to taste ALL of them-and they are very rich. so I do it for three reasons:
1) you get to taste them all and not feel too guilty
2) If for some reason you don't like it-you haven't made a huge calorie investment or thrown away a cookie.
3) they fit well in the box.

which brings us to cookie origami.

The process of cookie box making is really an art. There is cookie fitting, cookie surgery and cookie eyeballing.

so in cookie fitting you have to make sure every cookie fits tightly in the row-like a crossword puzzle- up and down and across. The way to do that is to eyeball all the cookies that you have to choose from and pick the ones that are the right size for the row.

Sometimes when cookie gets cut initially it has little bits of crust or topping that make it "not square" this means you have to carefully give the cookie a nip and tuck procedure as you box.

You also have to be concerned about the height of a cookie. As you go from row to row-if the cookies are not of uniform size underneath you will have cookies from the upper layer falling on the lower layer. This can work to your advantage in the last row where you may have a tall cookie that you want to put on top of a short cookie underneath-but then you have to worry about how wide it is and make sure the width matches or the upper row will be lopsided.

Eventually you get to the point where you are cutting cookies to fit. It is an art to make the boxes snug, with some of each cookie, and beautiful. And THAT is why cookie boxing is so complicated and time consuming. (so yes Dennis-your four degrees from MIT do NOT qualify you for box making! However any RISD graduates that would like to help next year-give me a call!)

Here are some pictures of some "rows" of boxed cookies. The last one is the last box I made-still perfect. THese are bottom and top rows. The bars go on the bottom, the others go on the top. Tthis provides a solid basis for the second or third row.