There's nothing I love more than learning a simple trick that makes a task easier.
I have always made my own dough butter cookies, gingerbreadand other cut cookies well in advance of holiday baking, wrapping the dough disks tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerating them until I was ready to bake and decorate.
John Sherman
And while making ahead is great practice for busy bakers, I never remembered to pull those rock-hard blocks of dough out of the freezer far enough in advance that they had time to thaw properly. It had been many years since I found myself pounding a half-frozen brick of gingerbread with a rolling pin while my impatient children looked on.
And then, of course, there's another problem: if you're trying to make nice, clean cookies (using your favorite holiday cookie cutters, of course), dough temperature matters. By the time it's soft enough to roll out easily, it's often so sticky that when you try to pry a gingerbread person off the work surface, they lose a limb.
So here's the trick I recently learned: Right after you've mixed your set butter cookies OR gingerbread dough (or these chocolate chips, egg biscuitsOR spice cookies), immediately put it on a sheet Parchment paper. (If you have a large amount of dough, divide it onto several sheets of parchment.) Top with a second sheet of parchment, then roll the dough to the specified thickness. (This special pin may help to make it even.) Remove the top sheet of parchment, then slide the sheet of dough onto a Cooking sheet, then refrigerate. (You can put as many sheets of dough on a baking sheet as you like.)
Photography by Mark Weinberg; Food styling by Liz Neily
If you only plan to store it for a few hours or days, there's no need to wrap the baking sheet; for longer storage, wrap entire baking sheet tightly in plastic wrap before freezing. The dough can be refrigerated for weeks; when you are ready to bake your cookies, remove as many sheets of dough from the freezer, let the dough sit at room temperature for five minutes, and then use preferred cutters to stamp cookies; they will be easy to cut, hold their shape and not stick. Plus, your well-chilled cookies are less likely to spread in the oven as they bake. It's a (small) holiday miracle.
Ready to decorate your cookies? Learn our favorite decorating techniques.
Cover picture (Gingerbread cookies) by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne
