102 Feet Wide and Over 40,000 pounds!
Yep, that's right! On May 17, 2003, we baked the World's Biggest Cookie right here next to our bakery in Flat Rock, NC. At 102 feet wide and over 40,000 pounds, we turned the previous 80 ft. record on its head!
We're sure you're wondering why we did such a crazy thing. Well, it all started with a brainstorming session about how we could raise awareness of the Folk Artist's Foundation (FAF), an organization started by Immaculate's founder, Scott Blackwell, to provide encouragement, support and exposure to artists working in the folk art tradition. Immaculate had always been the primary contributor to FAF, but we wanted to think of ways to boost the foundation to a more self-sustaining level. By far, the best idea of the day was to build a museum next to the bakery that would be FAF's permanent home and would also function as a gallery for the massive FAF art collection and an artist-in-residence space complete with a classroom for creative workshops. We all left the brainstorm that day feeling exhilarated by the prospect but secretly knowing that such an undertaking would require at least 5 years of planning, not to mention lots of money and extraordinary determination.
As the week went on, our apprehension quickly turned to excitement. Scott, with his token mix of steely resolve and a touch of impatience, had been brewing on an idea since our brainstorm. He knew he wanted to jump start the museum fund with a BIG event, something slightly off the wall and unlike anything Flat Rock had ever seen. The next idea came to him while on a run…we will bake the World's Biggest Cookie! The idea sounded like a whole lot of fun, and, as a cookie company, we definitely had the motivation, resources and knowledge to pull it off. The funniest part was that Scott began telling EVERYONE about the big idea, and he didn't even have a clue just how big the current biggest cookie was! A quick search led us to a company in New Zealand called Cookie Time that had baked an 81-footer just a few years back. WOW!, and WHOOPS! After the initial shock wore off, we decided to press on and set our goal at 100 feet.
After 8 months of designing the BIG oven, gathering up our 40,000 pounds of ingredients, calling up members of the press from near and far, and mixing thousands of batches of dough, the big day was upon us! Everything was ready: the Food Network crew was set up, the crane was in place, the dough had thawed, and the local news was camped out at the site. And then…the deluge was upon us! Rain, torrential rain and thunderstorms no less, descended on Flat Rock with a fury. Though deterred for a while, we waited out the storm and began laying dough on the pan just after midnight. We covered the cookie just before dawn and fired up the oven. As the morning wore on, the masses came to witness the landmark event. Though the rain moved in again, the crowd was lively listening to blues bands, purchasing paintings from the folk artists and browsing through the tent of North Carolina Specialty Foods.
Around 1 PM, we decided it was time to unveil the World's Biggest Chocolate Chip Cookie. The oven team began cutting the cover around the oven perimeter and a great surge of the warmest, chocolatiest, most delicious cookie scent wafted over the crowd. The escape of warm air also sent the oven cover soaring over 50 feet in the air; it was quite the spectacle! The cookie was fully baked straight through to the middle, and our first order of business was to allow David Huntley, local land surveyor, to take the official measurements of our cookies diameter. Our next task was to load Scott in the crane to be dropped in the center of the cookie while Louis Psihoyos, famed National Geographic photographer, took the crane to its highest point to capture the aerial photo above. After that, we began to cut the cookie and serve it to the waiting crowd, eager to get a taste of the World's Biggest Chocolate Chip cookie. We sold the slices in a special commemorative box for $10 each and raised nearly $20,000 towards the museum fund that day!
