You baked how many cookies?

601.

That's how many cutout Christmas cookies my mom, three aunts and I made this afternoon. In case you're wondering, that's 49 dozen cookies and 6 burnt roosters.

In case your wondering, we quadrupled the family recipe. Most years, we just triple it, but we had one extra aunt this year, so we made more cookies.

Fun tidbits:
* We used one 48 ounce canister of shortening plus an additional two cups.
* There was about 30 cups of flour involved in the actual cookie dough. Additional flour was used to sprinkle over the counter top before the rolling pin was used.
* I was not allowed to use a rolling pin. Apparently I'm too slow.
* Eight eggs were used.
* We employ an assembly line technique in making the cookies. Two people rolled the dough, two people used the cookie cutters, the first two people then scooped the cookies onto the pan, one person was in charge of the oven and one person counted the cookies and doled them out to the four tins waiting on the floor.
* I was the counter.
* My aunt's cat started to help herself to a cookie, but I caught her in time. Then she got ticked off at me (probably because the cookie was so tasty) and launched into the never-ending hiss.
* The cookie partly enjoyed by my aunt's cat was not in my cookie tin.

From start to finish, the whole process (from mixing the dough, to rolling, cutting the cookies out, baking and clean up) took 3 hours. That's 200 cookies per hour.

From my mom's tin, I took four dozen home for myself. I spent the evening frosting and decorating them.

But 600 cookies and they all turned out fine and tasty...except for the 6 burnt roosters.