What weighs nearly 20 tons, is the size of a basketball court and contains a million chunks of chocolate? The world's largest cookie, of course. And it is going to be baked in Hendersonville.
The chocolate chip cookie, almost twice the size of the monster cookie that holds the current world record in Guinness Book of Records, will be baked on May 17.
Hendersonville-based Immaculate Baking Co. is mixing the ingredients for the mammoth cookie that will take five to six hours to bake.
The public is invited to come and watch the giant chocolate chip cookie bake, Immaculate Baking Co. President Scott Blackwell told attendees of the Business Morning Update Wednesday at the Chariot.
The chocolate-chip monster will be 100 feet in diameter and weigh about 40,000 pounds. This compares with the Guinness title holder's measurements of almost 82 feet in diameter, weighing 28,000 pounds and covering an area of 5,243 square feet. The record holder was baked by Cookie Time bakeries of Christchurch New Zealand in April 1996.
"One hundred feet is the length of a basketball court, a Boeing 737, a blue whale, a brachiosaurus, or the width of the stage at Radio City Music Hall," Blackwell said.
Once baked, the big cookie will be cut and sold in small packages to raise money for the Folk Artists Foundation, a Henderson County organization that plans an art museum near the bakery.
While the cookie is baking, there will be artists at work and live music. Immaculate Baking Co. uses folk art on packages of cookies they produce.
Giant cookies require giant ovens, so the company is fabricating a circular aluminum pan 100 feet 3 inches in diameter with a 4-inch lip around the circumference.
The cookie dough will be mixed inside the plant and loaded as slabs onto the pan. Three layers of Mylar plastic will then be unrolled over the pan.
The oven will be outfitted with ducts that will carry heat from gas-fired burners into the oven. Calculations show it will take about 2.5 million BTUs to turn the dough into the desired shade of brown, Blackwell said.
A 10-foot diameter working model of the oven has been built and tested. Where the full-scale oven will require 325 to 350 degrees, the pilot model delivered 365 degrees at full capacity.
Windows will allow people to watch the cookie bake. Thermocouples placed at several locations will monitor the temperature. It will be a one-time use of the massive oven designed by Ken Butcher and Tom McCartney, Blackwell said.
"The dough will be laid out between 8 and 9 a.m. and the baking will go on until mid-afternoon," he added. "It's a chance to have a part in history."
Blackwell started the baking company in his Flat Rock garage in 1995. Three years later he moved to a rented store front on Seventh Avenue.
In 2002 he built the present factory on Brooklyn Avenue near U.S. 176. The companysells cookies across the United States, in Canada and in England.
Last year, the N.C. Business Journal named BlackwellSmall-Business Person of the Year.
