Every year I like to make something for my loved ones and friends for Christmas. Usually, it’s just cookies but I make six or seven batches of different cookies (Molasse, Sugar, Thumb Print, etc.) so there are a lot of ingredients both in the number of different ingredients and quantity of ingredients (it’s amazing how fast you can use up a bag of flower ). The downside to this type of large scale baking is that it’s very easy to forget something and need to make multiple trips to the already crowded grocery stores. The other problem is overestimating items or buying stuff that you already have. My goal for this year was to come up with a system that would keep me from having these problems.

1. Gather ALL of the reciepes
   Even if you think you’re 100% sure that you know every ingrediant, don’t skip this step because it’s possible to misremember an ingrediant (it’s happened to the best of us).
2. Fire Up Excel

   I’m going to use Excel in this example. It’s mostly because Excel will allow me to automatically sum the ingrediants but you’re more than welcome to use something else like a piece of paper.

   To start with we are going to create four columns:

   1. Item – The baking item (flour, butter, etc.)
   2. Unit – The unit the item is usually messured in (cups, tsps, etc.) stay consistant with the unit as it will make the calculations easier later.
   3. Total – This will calculate the total amount of this item (we will get back to this later).
   4. Shopping List – This column will provide us with a clean printout of the items we need when we go shopping.
   

   Basic Excel Sheet

   The starter template with some rows already entered can be found at http://www.scottwarren.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CookieTemplate-20101230.xlt if you don’t feel like typing this in yourself .

3. The Ingredients

   Starting in the fifth column enter the first item on the list and repeat until they are all entered. If there isn’t an ingredient listed add it and it’s units to the list. If an ingredient doesn’t have units (eggs, some kind of candy, etc.) just leave this column blank. At the end of this step you should have all your reciepes and their ingredients listed. Make sure that you save your progress at this point.

   

   Basic Excel Sheet with Entries

   Now that we have the data imported it’s time to start using the power of Excel to really make our jobs easier.

4. Setting Up The Calculations Skip this step if you’re using the template I made.

   The first item to enter is the calculation that will determine how much of an ingredient we need. This is done by clicking inside of C2 and entering the following calculation:
   
=SUM(E2:IV2)

   This will sum up the amount of the ingredent in that row so we have a total to work with. The second caluation needed to be entered in D2:
   
=C2 & IF(B2="", " "," " & B2 & " ") & A2

   This calculation is WAY more confusing because it attempts to make the formatting nice. Basically, it’s building what the item would look like on a shopping list and the center section with the if determines if the units needs to be added or not. Before proceding make sure that this looks correct.

   Now that we have the items entered once we can fill these items down so it will be calculated for all of the ingredients. The first step is to click C2 and while holding the shift button down click on the last row of the ingredient list in the “Shopping List” column. When the cells have been selected hold the “Ctrl” key down and press the “d” key to fill down. The “Shopping List” column should now contain a shopping list of everything that you need for your baking.

5. File -> Print

   Select the entire row by click on the letter “D” and go to print the item. When the “Print” dialog box appears make sure you select “Selection” in the “Print what” section. After this prints out you should have a handy shopping list of everything you need.

   

   Print Dialog

6. Raid the Cupboards

   One of the goals for this process is to eliminate extra items. Starting with the first item on your list, and without skipping over any, take it from it’s storage location and put it in sperate location. I would suggest a counter or table. If you have enough of an ingredient cross it from the list as you take it out. By the end of this process your shopping list should have shrunk and you will know exactly what to purchase.

7. Go Shopping
8. Divide and Conquer

   Now that you have everything ready to go start baking! Work on one reciepe at a time and as you no longer need an ingredient put in away so you can more easily find other ingredients as you work.

Hopefully this will reduce the amount of stress in holiday baking. I know it helped me this year and I thought others might benifit from my experiance and remember:

Have fun!