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If you want to make cookies for a crowd for a cookie exchange or a party at work, there are a few ways that you can plan ahead to cut down on the last-minute work. One way is to buy everything pre-made, but if you want to bake them yourself you can buy the dough to skip that step. In this article I’ve calculated how much pre-made cookie dough you’ll need to serve a crowd.
How many cookies will you need?
Depending on how much food you’ll have at your event, you might need to adjust your cookie serving counts. If the cookies will be the only dessert, you’ll probably need more than if you have a lot of other sweets.
This article has charts that go over how many cookies you’ll need, depending on the type of crowd that you have and how many men vs women there are: How many sugar cookies do you need?
Once you have that information, you can continue on to figure out how much cookie dough you’ll need!
How much cookie dough should you buy?
If you want to buy premade cookie dough from the grocery store to bake, most tubes or packages come in quantities of 12-24, depending on the size of the cookie. You can also buy tubs of cookie dough to scoop out using an ice cream scoop, and those serve more.
You can also buy packets of dry mix to make the cookies yourself, and if you do that you’ll also need additional ingredients like butter and eggs. Depending on your timeline and budget, making the cookies yourself, either from scratch or using the packet mix, might be a cheaper way to go, but it will take longer.
Here’s a quick cheat sheet of how many packets of dry cookie mix you’ll need to buy for different crowd sizes if you’re planning on making them that way:
| Number of cookie mix packets | Makes this many small cookies | Makes this many large cookies |
| 1 | 22 | 12 |
| 2 | 44 | 24 |
| 3 | 66 | 36 |
| 4 | 88 | 48 |
| 5 | 110 | 60 |
| 6 | 132 | 72 |
| 7 | 154 | 84 |
| 8 | 176 | 96 |
| 9 | 198 | 108 |
| 10 | 220 | 120 |
If you have a large group this is going to take more time and effort to bake than buying the pre-made dough, and you’ll have to add the butter and eggs that the packets call for to your shopping list.
If you want to cut the time that the baking will take, you can buy the dough premade in the refrigerated section of your local grocery store to eliminate the time it would take you to mix the dough.
Baking premade dough is more convenient than baking everything from scratch, but you’ll be limited to the flavors that the cookies come in. It’s a trade-off, so you’ll have to decide for yourself if you’re more concerned with baking the cookies or making them fancy!
These charts shows how many packages of cookie dough you’ll need for the crowd size you have:
| Number of premade cookie dough packages that make 12 large cookies | Total number of cookies |
| 1 | 12 |
| 2 | 24 |
| 3 | 36 |
| 4 | 48 |
| 5 | 60 |
| 6 | 72 |
| 7 | 84 |
| 8 | 96 |
| 9 | 108 |
| 10 | 120 |
| Number of premade cookie dough packages that make 24 large cookies | Total number of cookies |
| 1 | 24 |
| 2 | 48 |
| 3 | 72 |
| 4 | 96 |
| 5 | 120 |
| 6 | 144 |
| 7 | 168 |
| 8 | 192 |
| 9 | 216 |
| 10 | 240 |
| Number of premade cookie dough tubs that make 36 small cookies | Total number of cookies |
| 1 | 36 |
| 2 | 72 |
| 3 | 108 |
| 4 | 144 |
| 5 | 180 |
| 6 | 216 |
| 7 | 252 |
| 8 | 288 |
| 9 | 314 |
| 10 | 360 |
How to make cookie dough ahead of time.
For the best flavor, you’ll need to make the cookie dough from scratch. You can also add extra things like dried fruit and nuts into the cookie dough if you do that.
Making cookie dough ahead of time is really easy, since most cookies don’t need any rising time like homemade bread does.
For most cookie recipes that you bake by scooping dough onto a cookie sheet, you can freeze the dough ahead of time, then thaw it out to bake.
Make the cookie dough from scratch, measure it out in individual portions, and put it on a cookie sheet. Put the sheet in the freezer, and when the dough hardens up, you can store the frozen cookie dough balls in a ziplock bag.
When it’s time to bake the cookies, put the balls of dough back on lined cookie sheets and let them sit at room temperature to thaw out for a few hours.
I wouldn’t store the cookies for much longer than a couple of weeks, since the longer you leave them in the freezer the more likely it is for them to get freezer burn. A week is better, but some people freeze dough for a lot longer than that. Make sure to double-bag the ziplock bags if you’ll be doing that.
For a recipe for oatmeal cookies that’s really easy to make from scratch, doesn’t have any eggs or butter, and that will freeze well, click here: Classic oatmeal cookies. This recipe will make about 24 cookies depending on how you portion the dough, so you can use the chart above for the 24-pack cookie dough to figure out how many batches you’ll need.
These are fast and easy to make, and you can mix things in to give them extra flavor. This list of 23 add-ins will give you some ideas.
Cookies are an easy thing to bake, and there are plenty of options for baking them yourself. Using the premade dough can give you a head start!