Cookie Baking Tips

Tips for Cookie Baking

Measuring Out Sticky Dough
Use a small ice cram scoop to measure out the dough. Dip the scoop into cold water between scoopings to ensure that the dough releases easily every time.

Keeping Cookie Separate While Baking
Instead of lining up the rows, alternate the rows of cookies. The first row can have four cookies, the second three cookies, the third four cookies and so on.

Freezing Cookie Dough
Form the dough into balls and arrange them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or waxed paper. Place the cookie sheet in the freezer. When the balls are frozen place them in a freezer bag or airtight container. Remove as many balls as you like when you want to make cookies. Follow directions and increase cook time 1-2 minutes.

Reusing The Same Baking Sheet
When you only have one cookie sheet, load up a sheet of parchment paper with balls of dough, slide the paper onto the cookie sheet and place the cookies in the oven. While the first batch is baking, load up a second sheet with cookie dough. When the baked cookies come out of the oven, whisk the parchment and its cargo onto a cooling rack. Cool the baking sheet with a quick rinse and dry. Now it is ready for the next batch.

Shaping Thumbprint Cookies
Press the back side of a melon baler into dough balls before baking. The end of a wooden honey dipper works well also.

Shaping Sugar Cookies
Roll a piece of dough between your palms into a ball (about 1 ½ tablespoons of dough formed into a ball about 1 ½ inches in diameter). Roll the ball of dough into a bowl filled with granulated sugar.
Choose a drinking glass that measures about 2 inches across the bottom. Butter the bottom of the glass and dip into a bowl of sugar. Use the glass to flatten the dough balls. Dip the glass back into the sugar after shaping every other cookie.

Rescuing Burnt Cookies
Gently grate the burnt layer off the bottom with a microplane grater/zester.

Making Colored Sugar
Sprinkle about ½ cup of granulated sugar evenly over the bottom of a pie plate or metal bowl. Add about 5 drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. To be sure the color is evenly distributed, push the sugar through a fine sieve. Spread the sugar back onto the pie plate or on a baking sheet and let dry completely.

Organizing Cookie Decorations
Place a different decoration in each cup of a muffin tin.

Easy Drying for Frosted Cookies
Coat the rim of a small paper cup with frosting and invert on the middle of a paper plate. Arrange as many drying cookies around the cup as will fit comfortably on the plate. Dab the exposed rim of the cup with frosting, then make another plate in the same manner and stack it on top f the first. Repeat until you have 4-5 cookie-laden plates.

Keeping Cookies Fresh
Line the inside of a glass cookie jar with a large plastic Ziploc bag. Place the cookies in the bag and seal tightly.

Good Cookie Baking Rules
Read the entire recipe through. Assemble all the ingredients before you begin. Cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly, but mix in the dry ingredients gently or your cookies will be too tough to crumble.

Greased Pans
Cookies baked on greased pans spread more and are thinner than cookies baked on ungreased pans.
Do not regrease a hot baking sheet. Let it cool, wipe it clean and begin afresh.

Baking Parchment
baking parchment or aluminum-foil covered pans will keep certain cookies, such as molasses and oatmeal, moist and less likely to burn on the bottom. Cut sheets of parchment or foil ahead of time and simply change the sheet with each batch.

Baking
Preheat your oven 30 minutes before baking.
Use a timer. An overbaked cookie is dry and tastes stale.
Check cookies for doneness 2-3 minutes before the recipe indicates. Ovens vary and different baking sheets affect results.

Cooking and Storing
Cool cookies on wire racks without touching each other so they do not stick.
Store completely cooled cookies in airtight jars or tins topped with plastic wrap before closing.
Cookies can be frozen up to 2 months if securely wrapped. Thaw at room temperature.
Store just one kind of cookie in a container. Don’t mix them up or they’ll all taste the same.

Rolled Cookies
These cookies can be cut into a variety of shapes. Wrap the chilled dough first to firm it slightly – 15 minutes is about right. The chilling relaxes the gluten and produces a more tender cookie. Too much chilling hardens the butter and shortening, and you’ll have to work the dough hard to roll it out.

From Best Kitchen Quick Tips and The New Basics Cookbook.