Logistics of Tasting & Voting

[libbyinct]

Hi Robin and ladies!

I am getting ready to host my 7th "amost annual" cookie swap, and would like to include tasting and voting on several categories, for which I will award prizes.

I wonder whether you guys could help me with the logistics of tasting/voting? Specifically, I ask my guests to bring 6 dozen cookies, ready for display. If I let everyone go around the table and taste whole cookies in order to vote, we'll greatly diminish the number each person will be able to take home. How do you ladies handle this? Do you cut cookies into small bite-size pieces? I'd love your suggestions! Also, I'd love to hear more about the different categories you vote on.

Thank you!

[DianeR]

I ask the ladies to bring their 10 dozen for the swap, and then a few extra cookies in a baggie for our tasting and judging plates. The tasting plate is for all the ladies to sample, and the judging plate goes to our guest judges (a few of the husbands).

The ladies vote on Best Display (The Sandra Lee Award), Best Looking Cookie (The Martha Stewart Award), and the husbands vote on the Best Tasting Cookie (The Betty Crocker Award).

Hope that helps.

[capecodcookie]

Diane, I love the names for your awards! Very creative!

I think I will have to "borrow" your fabulous idea.

[amberorduna]

I make up little voting sheets. I also have different categories. Best display (to urge the girls to not bring in Tupperware), best tasting, and then usually 2 others like best newbie and the last category fits with my theme. So the year we did the Griswold Family Christmas the catagory was cookie you're most likely to make over and over. Another years it was the prettiest cookie. Something like that. So we all go around and taste the cookies and the girls all have ballots and pencils to vote so they aren't pressured to vote for someone/something specific. In the past we would take marbles and place them in front of our favorites but that still felt awkward to some of the girls.

[Kim_B]

Previous years we'd take a couple of each cookie and cut them into pieces for everyone to have a taste. This worked very well for our small group of 8. I'm sticking with this method until it proves too difficult.

As for voting, I number all the containers of cookies, then hand out slips of paper (the first time we did this was last year, and it wasn't very official). This year, I will take the time to actually make ballots for everyone to write their votes on.

I'll add that I'm a rebel and I don't make my guest bring x dozen cookies based on how many people attend; it's too stressful on some people, and we quite honestly don't need that many cookies. Each person usually bring a couple dozen of 2-3 varieties, we snack on some during the party, and they leave with what they want. I have my party the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so some of the cookies/treats don't hold up very well much longer than a week or so.