Prep time ---- Pay Off ratio

Been trying out recipes that look awesome and thought we should make a prep time to pay-off scale.
Please add your own. If you have edits to mine please say so, I surely have not made tons of variety so I don’t know if my scales are the most accurate.

Scale 1 - 10
1: 1 step away from buying cookies at the store ---- 10: Insanity

Companion Cube Cookies: score= +1
Prep Time: 7/10- Rolled and glazed sugar cookies are automatically a 5 or 6. These also have lots of little parts that need to be counted and kept track of, glued onto the main cookie with jelly, and then frosted with special designs.
Pay off: 8/10- Minimum 5$ for the cookie, large, cheap ingredients, high demand, good draw-in factor, but hard to make a lot of them, only pretty tasty.

Pinata cookies: score= -3
Prep Time: 9/10- I spent all night making dough for these and never even turned the oven on by 10pm. Lots of refrigerating between steps, kneeding in food coloring, very difficult to make the layers, have to fill and glue each one.
Pay off: 6/10- eye catching, large, good for people who like very sweet (if you fill with skittles), but cannot make nearly enough. Yield is tiny with a lot of waste.

Bacon Chocolate Chip: +3
Prep Time: 4/10- Have to make bacon AND chocolate chip cookies then combine
Pay off: 7/10- Interesting makes good draw in, very tasty, but limiting in people who can eat them and some expensive ingredients in bacon and chocolate, can produce pretty high yield.

I was planning on making Companion Cube Cupcakes for PAX this year! The design and fondant takes a long time to prep/bake. Takes about, I’d say, 24 hours (I make mine from scratch) to let the fondant harden and then get all the food coloring/design/cutouts going.

I know that here in Oregon, Bacon Maple (donut) bars are really popular, only at Voodoo Doughnuts of course. It would be interested to try to make that into a cupcake form!

The mini-dougnut place at Pike Place has maple bacon now too. Even more impressive because they only carry 3 types. Now 4.

crunching some hard numbers for this while making first batches. Like cost per cookie. I’ll try to get time numbers on the second batches.

Okay, for my Monster cookies they cost 39 cents per cookie for the original ones, 50 cents for nutella, and 46 cents for the peanut butter overload. I’ll add time when I have them. By the way, that’s massive amounts of math.

I like basic drop cookies & Rice Krispie Treats. But for the payoff in prep time versus payoff issue, basic drop cookies win hands-down. Rice Krispies take a lot of product for not a lot of payoff. Anything with icing will take longer, too.

Getting creative with your drop cookie flavors can make up for the lack of d