Homemade cookies are great for holiday gift giving and also for enjoying at home. Here are some some tips for baking cookies.
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This post is all about tips for making the best Christmas cookies and holiday cookies this season.
If you’re making cookie gift plates, tins, or bags, then you may find yourself baking dozens of holiday cookies. These tips can help to streamline the process and help you make amazingly good holiday cookies.
12 Tips for Making Holiday Cookies
Here are some tips for making the best holiday cookies.
1–Make sure you have enough cookie sheets.
Having more than one or two cookie sheets can make it easier to bake dozens of cookies at one time. This can be especially good when you need to make a large amount of cookies for a holiday cookie exchange, a holiday office party, or when you are making cookies to give away as homemade Christmas gifts.
A large cookie sheet makes it easy to bake many cookies at one time.
It can be good to have different sizes of cookie sheets to use for cookie baking and other uses in the kitchen—like making mini pizzas, baking appetizers, roasting sheet pan dinners—and making your favorite holiday cookies.
2–Use good ingredients.
Use the best ingredients that you can find or afford for making holiday cookies. This is especially true for simple cookies that only require a few ingredients, like shortbread cookies or butter cookies. The flavor of each ingredient shines through.
3–Let the cookie sheets cool in between uses.
Let the cookie sheets cool in between uses. Adding cookie dough to a hot cookie sheet causes the cookie dough to spread and lose it’s shape before it even goes into the oven.
This is another reason to have more than one cookie sheet to use when baking cookies. One cookie sheet can cool off while you are using another.
4–Use cookie cutters to make classic Christmas cookie shapes.
Cookie cutters make it easy to form cookie dough into fun shapes, like reindeer, Christmas trees, and more. Use cookie icing and candy sprinkles to decorate the cookies for an even more festive look.
5–Use a cookie press to make cookies in the same size or shape.
A cookie press helps you form evenly sized cookies for your holiday cookie tray. These can be especially great to use when you want to make a lot of cookies in the same size and shape.
6–Use parchment paper to make clean up easier.
Parchment paper is great for everything from rolling cookie dough to baking. If you have a sticky cookie dough, placing the dough between two sheets of parchment paper can make it easier to roll out.
Lining the inside of a baking sheet with parchment paper can make it easier to clean the baking sheet in between uses, which can be a big time saver when you’re making multiple batches of cookies.
7–Keep the cookie shapes.
Sometimes it can be hard to keep the cookie shapes for the types of cookies that you are trying to form and bake. Here are a few tips that may help you to keep the cookie shapes.
For fragile cookie shapes or those made using cookie cutters, try rolling the cookie dough between two sheets of parchment paper.
Remove the top sheet or parchment paper, and then press the cookie cutters into the dough while it rests on the second sheet of parchment paper. Leave enough space between each shape for the cookies to rise and spread as they bake.
Remove the excess dough, and then carefully transfer the parchment paper and cookie shapes to your baking sheet. (For delicate cookies, you may also wish to shape the cookies on parchment paper that has been placed directly onto a non heated, or cool, cookie sheet. Remove any excess dough before baking.)
(If the cookie dough needs to chill before baking, then you can cover the baking sheet and place it in the refrigerator to chill. Transfer the parchment paper with the cookie forms on it to a room temperature baking sheet before baking.)
Bake the cookies according to recipe instructions. In some cases, the excess dough can be reshaped and used to make more cookies.
8–Chill the cookie dough when necessary.
Some types of cookie dough bake up better once the dough has been chilled. In some cases, if you don’t start with a chilled dough, the cookie dough will melt together into a shapeless form and the cookies won’t bake up right.
If a recipe calls for chilling the dough, then plan to chill the dough for the appropriate amount of time before baking the cookies.
9–Use a cookie scoop for more even cookies.
A cookie scoop is great for scooping out more evenly sized cookies. This helps cookies to bake more evenly and to roughly the same size, which looks great for presentation.
Cookie scoops generally work best for softer types of cookie dough. Hard or cold cookie dough may break the scoop.
10–Give the cookies space while baking.
Leaving space between cookies helps with air circulation and helps the cookies to bake more evenly. It also makes it easier to remove cookies from the cookie sheet once the cookies are baked.
As a rule of thumb, many cookie recipes call for leaving about 2 inches of space between cookies, but you should refer to the recipe that you are using for tips on how much to space the cookies.
11–Let the cookies cool before decorating the cookies or storing them.
After each batch comes out of the oven, carefully place the cookies on a cooling rack to cool. A cooling rack allows air to circulate around the cookies to help them cool. It’s often best to let cookies cool completely before decorating them or placing them on a gift plate or in a cookie bag or box to give away.
12–Have the right supplies for baking cookies.
The right supplies can make it easier to make holiday cookies. Favorites include tools like mixing bowls with slip resistant bottoms, for mixing up ingredients; measuring cups and spoons, for getting the right amounts of each ingredient; a spatula and / or a spoonula, for blending and mixing; and a cookie spatula, for lifting cookies off a baking sheet to transfer them to a plate or cooling rack once the cookies are baked and cooled.
Mixing bowls with slip resistant bottoms can make it easier to hold the bowl in place while mixing ingredients.
Measuring cups and spoons are a must have for getting the right amounts of each ingredient for a cookie recipe.
Spoonulas and spatulas make it easy to mix and blend many types of cookie dough ingredients.
A cookie spatula is the perfect size and shape for lifting many types of cookies from a cookie sheet or baking sheet.
Finally, package the holiday cookies in a festive cookie bag or cookie box to give away.
This post was all about tips for making the best holiday cookies.
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- Featured title photo by Joyful / Unsplash
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