My experimentation with various recipes has rewarded me this Christmas month.
For my birthday this year, my friend DAEI gifted me with a small, handy cookbook containing recipes for edible gifts, i.e. food that can be prepared and shared as gifts for family and friends. Browsing through the recipes, I found several that I thought were quite easy to prepare, but unique and would be appreciated by its recipients. That's where I discovered the recipe for cookie balls. The magic word in the recipe? It's "no-bake". (Archie gifted me with a table oven for my birthday as well but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet ~ but I will one of these days. At the time, however, when DAEI gave me the cookbook, I didn't have one yet.)
So I thought, why not give out these cookie balls to my barkada for Christmas?
First, however, I had to do my usual taste-test. I made a batch for Archie, my personal food critic a.k.a. taga-tikim. ;-) What do you know? For someone who doesn't have a sweet tooth, he found that he liked it a lot (and it's not just because he really loves me, OK) and immediately coined a name for it, calling it "Archie's Cookie Crunchie". It's not at all crunchy, mind you, but he says it's because of the nuts!
I also gave one apiece to my other personal taste-testers, Roge and Devery at the office, to see how my experiment would fare. Roge says she loves it, because it's so rich, and Devery thought the same, as well. My mom and Venice, between the two of them, have eaten all but one container-full of cookies in record time. With all the positive feedback, what else did I need? I immediately bought the ingredients and prepared an entire batch, not for my barkada, but for Archie's lawyer-officemates, to be given at their office party.
This is how I packaged it. I put the cookie balls inside decorated sandwich bags like this, tying them up with festive ribbons or abaca twine ~
... and then placed them in Christmas mug boxes like this, which can be bought in Quiapo ~
So as not to hide the poinsettia effect when the box is sealed, I punched holes on gift tags and a personalized "Keep Cookies Chilled" notes, with "Foodie-at-Law" and my number printed on them, then threaded them through abaca twine to hang by the side of the box. Cute, di ba?
When I gave the cookie balls to Archie's officemates, I was all too pleased with the feedback. Minnie, Mark's wife, texted in the morning just to say that her hubby ate practically all of the cookies, and Myra told Archie how she loved it, even leaving a comment on my Friendster account simply to tell me that she, her fiance Lowell, and her brother fought for each piece. My heart can't help but swell, knowing that people liked what I made!
The following week, I prepared another batch for my lawyer-barkada's, which I gave at our get-together/dinner at Noy's house. The following morning, Bunny sent a message saying that the cookies were good and "super-chewy". That same weekend, Mau texted me telling me that he loved the cookies as well and he's placing orders for 10 boxes, saying that I should start a business... Then come Monday morning, Angie, my best friend, asks if it I really made the cookies ~ masarap daw kase at pwede na akong mag-asawa. :-) She also placed orders for 10 boxes... and here come email messages from Chai and Dyegs, asking me if there's a 2nd batch of my yummy cookies!
To make a long story short, I've begun a small, private business with these cookie balls, which I merely experimented with after seeing how easy it was to follow the recipe. I modified the recipe a bit, not finding it necessary to add the chopped nuts as the cookie itself is already so creamy and rich with all the lumps of chocolate chips that I've used.
So, to My-my, who's been, as I heard, asking for the recipe for these cookie balls, my sincerest apologies...! Maybe I can teach you how to make them later... But for now, it will remain a trade secret of my small enterprise. :-)
Now. Would you like to buy? A box of 12 pieces each costs a very cheap P125.00, and I also sell them in plastic containers of 20 pieces each ~ they can be for personal consumption, or decorated as well if you're planning to give them away as presents. The 20-piece containers cost P225.00 only.
And I'm not even factoring in the cost of labor. I only use the most sumptuous, semi-sweet branded chocolate chips, not the generic ones you can get for wholesale. So I guarantee the creaminess and richness of these cookie balls ~ need my previous recipients' testimonials? ;-)
Congratulate me and buy these cookies, OK?
Check back for more goodies for sale! :-)
