Part 1: Goblyncon Prep: Behind the Scenes of My First Convention
I'm writing this fresh off my first-ever convention experience at Goblyncon, and I believe in complete transparency - both within systems architecture and baking. So let's dive into how I prepared for this adventure, what went right, and what challenged me along the way!
Planning the Menu
After careful consideration of the time of year and products that my customers enjoyed, I settled on three items:
Megabyte Chocolate Chunk Cookie - Chocolate chip cookies are a safe favorite for many people, and a great entry point for my baking!
Megabyte Butterscotch and Toffee Cookie - This flavor combination is my signature, and the contrast of sweet and salty is highly addictive!
Apple Thumbprint Cookie - It's Pumpkin Spice season, and the warming spices work extremely well with apple, plus the size of the cookie is significantly smaller than the other two!
Thursday Evening: The Prep Begins
I spent Thursday evening prepping the dough for the chocolate and butterscotch cookies, cooking the apple pie filling for the thumbprint cookies, and baking the chocolate cookies (since they required less chilling time than the butterscotch). It went pretty well as a whole - the two ovens in my allocated commercial kitchen workspace were close to my home oven in regards to temperature and circulation, so I was highly pleased with the end result.
Friday Morning: Problem #1 - The Great Cookie Expansion
The next morning, I went back into the kitchen to finish the remainder of the work, and ran into my first problem - the butterscotch cookies were expanding a TON in the oven! It turned out that the other ovens I was assigned to were running 10-20 degrees hotter than expected, which melted the butter faster than expected, leading to the cookies not fitting within the bags I purchased.
In order to fix this, I had to make an emergency stop at Michaels to purchase boxes for these gigantic cookies - they gained a more premium appearance, but it cost me a precious 45 minutes of baking time, and it was an additional cost to incur.
The Apple Thumbprints: A Bright Spot
After that, it was relatively smooth sailing to bake the apple thumbprint cookies - sugar cookie dough is extremely pleasurable to knead, shape, and dimple, and the baking was straightforward (after learning that the oven was running hot). The smell of the finished cookies was so enticing, that fellow cooks within the kitchen wanted to buy some!
Setup at the Eisenhower Hotel
Driving out to Goblyncon was smooth, with ample parking at the Eisenhower Hotel. The organizers were well organized, with packets that included the location of the table, badges, and other needed information for the convention. Setting up my table was straightforward, since I could just wheel everything straight up to my table with the provided carts!
Not pictured - the person to my right eagerly waiting to buy some cookies!
The layout is somewhat basic, favoring function over everything else - next time I'll bring stands for my menus, along with a whiteboard to write fun things for every day, along with short-time specials!
Problem #2: The Crumbling Cookies
While unpacking all of my kit, I ran into my second issue - the apple thumbprint cookies had a higher than expected amount of crumbling cookies in the bags! I believe that it was a two-part issue - the moisture within the apple pie filling softened the sugar cookie base a bit more than expected, and stacking the cookies on top of each other within a flexible container stressed the cookies on the bottom more than they could tolerate. For the future, investing in more rigid storage is mandatory!
Flash Sale Alert!
The good news? While the butterscotch and apple cookies sold out completely over the weekend, I still have some chocolate chunk cookies left over! I'm holding a flash sale so that more people can get a taste of what the convention community has been enjoying, at a one-time, never-before-seen discount! Don't miss this chance to try them!
Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll share how the convention itself went, the amazing community I met, and the valuable lessons I learned for next time!
