Markets have this down-to-earth ambience, where strangers are but friends, live music is for free, fresh produce is available straight from the farm and cookies are baked from the heart. The way the world should be.
In a venture to make some extra cash, my friend and I decided to rent a stall at our local market. I certainly have a new appreciation for market folk. When I initially entered into this enterprise, it seemed like a piece of cake. That, it was not.
After committing to a stall, we started to plan. So came the question, what to sell? Well my friend's sister is a chef and makes the most scrumptious white chocolate and macadamia cookies on the planet. so we decided to ask her if she could spare a recipe for some market noobs. Luckily she was kind enough to lend us the recipe (thanks Nicky). So then we got our bake on.
We made slight renditions to the original cookie recipe and created a batch of trial cookies. We picked only the best flavours and agreed on sizes. It was necessary to taste test them frequently to make sure they were perfect. There was often the odd-looking cookie which needed to be eaten, the marginally cooked one that needed to be eaten, the slightly over cooked one that needed to be eaten. The ones that looked too delicious
that needed to be eaten. They all wanted to be eaten but with great effort we restrained ourselves from eating the warm, chocolate melting, cakey, cookie goodness. It
wasn't easy.
After eating numerous batches of cookies, we were all cookied out and could begin cooking the cookies for our market stall (oh yea that's what we were doing). We were
up till 4 in the am baking our little heads off. And then to wake up at 7am to set up shop? What had we gotten ourselves into? We were tired zombies but made it to the market armed with delicious cookies ready to rock 'n' roll.
It was fun, it went well, and who knew you could make money just from baking cookies. With a bunch of lovely friends to lend a hand and a sure-fire recipe in our pocket, it was hard not to be a success.
Olives x
