Logistics and Joy of Baking Holiday Cookies and Delivering Them the Academic Way

All academics have to be very patient - it takes time to get a PhD, time to get promotion and tenure, and one has to wait referees' reports on journal articles that we submit, which we then revise, and, hopefully, the articles that we have labored so hard on, do get accepted and then published, which also takes time!

It is, hence, advisable to also have activities that one can engage in that one gets more or less instant gratification from and focuses a different part of the brain, although, as an academic, one brings one's analytical and critical thinking skills to almost any endeavor.

This time of the year, when the weather gets colder, and the days shorter, and one has recovered from the Thanksgiving travel and celebrations, I always enjoy baking holiday cookies. But even more so, I enjoy delivering them to friends and neighbors.

The logistics of cookie baking involves identifying the types of cookies to be baked and finding the recipes, procuring the necessary ingredients, scheduling the baking of the cookie varieties (some, serendipitously, might not even require baking, such as our famous chocolate rum walnut balls), waiting for them to cool, decorating them, if necessary, putting them on plates for delivery and packaging them nicely. Then I usually insert a nice holiday card and figure out the optimal routing for delivery, always taking into consideration the day and time of departure to try and find the recipients at home.

This year, the first batches of cookies that I baked took parts of two different days and a big tip is using parchment paper since there is no cleaning of baking pans before putting on the next batch and into the oven.

Below are some photos from this baking project and my family members are the taste testers and approvers.

The ingredients in the cookie recipes this year included lots of almond paste, candied cherries, coconut, pecans, walnuts, chocolate,  the usual butter, sugar, and vanilla, plus raspberry jam, to make butter cookies that our wonderful staff member at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, Wivvian Hall, once made for me when I was a Visiting Professor there and then gave me the recipe!

Now, since our friends and neighbors range from very young children to those in the mid80s, and many children like the less fancy cookies, I also make some cookies (see above) with reindeer faces and Christmas trees on them. These are ready to bake.

This past Sunday, we did one of the biggest deliveries, and to see the joy on the neighbors' faces was very special. Even two little boys wrote us a beautiful thank you card and delivered it to our door. It is important, especially in this day and age, to support your immediate community and neighbors and to show that they matter. Baking is a labor of love and a way of saying, in a small way, that someone matters. We will continue to be making deliveries and baking as well, which provide a warm and welcoming break from end of the semester projects, exams, and all sorts of committee meetings.

Of course, I also plan to bake more cookies for various events and parties including our end of the semester UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter party at the Isenberg School of Management. This semester I am teaching a class on Transportation and Logistics and am practicing what I preach.

Happy holidays!

Cookie Supply Chains for the Holidays

This is a very special time of the year with festivities, holiday decorations, bright lights, and many pleasant get-togethers.

This is also a time when some of us very much enjoy baking cookies and delivering the finished products to friends and neighbors.

I have written about my cookie baking in the past and am glad that I am joined by other academic colleagues, who enjoy baking as much as I do, and who also post photos of the finished products -- thanks to Dr. Laura McLay and to  Dr. Tallys Yunes  and I am sure that there are others.

This year, the inputs into my cookie production processes included: almonds, walnuts, and pecans from California, chocolate from Switzerland, rum from Bermuda (which we brought back a few years ago), cherries from Florida, flour and sugar, local eggs, yummy vanilla, and local jam.

I had done R&D to innovate my cookie selection this year, and included a recipe from my wonderful Swedish staff person at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Ms. Hall, who not only had baked some of these delicious Swedish cookies for me but had also provided me with the recipe.

I procured many of the ingredients several nights ago and last evening had the assembly line up and running. As one batch of cookies baked (pecan sandies, almond treats with cherries, Swedish tarts with jam, coconut macaroons dipped in chocolate, and more ) I also made rum balls, which did not require baking. We academics are really good at parallel processing (multitasking) as well as scheduling. My other innovation this year was to use parchment paper -- no cookies sticking and easy cleanup (my husband's job). This helped with the efficiency.

The joy of baking! Not only did the house smell great from all the aromas but it was also a lot of fun to arrange the cookies on plates for delivery. I will spare you the photos of what the sink looked like.

Today, I delivered some packaged plates and the ones below will be delivered over the next day or so,

 

As for the cookies that I sampled -- a baker needs to make sure the finished product is delicious -- I can attest that the pecan sandies and the rum balls were the best that I have ever made.

And, I heard even from one of my former undergrads in Operations Management at the Isenberg School of Management, who said that he was getting ready to make my rum balls for his family for Christmas (I had given him the recipe since he had sampled some at one of our INFORMS Student Chapter parties and the rum balls have become a tradition in his family).

The greatest pleasure is seeing the smiles on faces when we ring the doorbell to give a plate of our cookies!

Transportation (and consumption) are also essential components of cookie supply chains!

Of course, it is also great to practice what you preach and to show that their is actually some  scholarship involved I managed to find a research article on a bakery that cites one of our supply chain papers. 

Baking Holiday Cookies with Photos

December is a time of the year when, in academia, projects and papers for courses are due, exams are being prepared, then taken (by students), and graded (by professors).

While working on finishing up the semester and writing up a final exam I every year look forward to baking and distributing cookies with my daughter.

Yes, I am a professor who likes to bake (and also loves to give out and eat cookies).

Somehow (I think we in Operations Research just tend to be very efficient at our tasks), I managed to finish a paper this past week that I will be presenting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, this Monday, and did my first batch of holiday baking.

I also very much enjoy the logistics of baking (from the shopping for the ingredients to the preparation to the artistry and science of assemblying the cookies, decorating them and baking them).

Above are some photos taken of the results. All the cookies (except for one plate) have already been distributed to some friends and neighbors (hope to bake more after the semester and grading are over with).

In the meantime, enjoy this holiday season!