Francois baked just enough cookies to fill all the orders at his bakery. while the cookies were cooling, a kitchen assistant knocked over a cooling rack and spilled %12, percent of the cookies onto the floor. francois had to bake 36 more cookies to replace them. how many cookies were ordered in total?

300 cookies were ordered to start. 

We can tell this because we know 12% is equal to 36. Because this is true, we can set up a proportion to solve. All proportions can be set up with the small number on top and the total on the bottom. This will help you solve for the missing number, which is in this case the total number of cookies.  Let x be the total number of cookies.  

Percentage/total percentage = cookies/cookies total 
12/100 = 36/x

Now we can cross multiply to solve. 
(100)(36) = (12)(x) > multiply 
3600 = 12x ---> divide by 12
300 = x