Cookie Tips

If you like cookies to be moist and not dry, substitute brown sugar for castor sugar.

To get a stained glass look in rolled cookies, make a small cut out in the middle of the cookie and fill it with crushed up Jolly Ranchers before baking. The pieces melt to fill the space perfectly!

Use a pizza cutter to cut bar cookies, it does a nice job.

To keep my brown sugar soft, I purchase brown sugar in the plastic bags (not the boxed version). After opening, I place the brown sugar in the orginal plastic bag inside an appropriately sized ziploc bag. Easy to store and always stays soft.
When decorating cakes, put icing into a piece of saran wrap, wrap and twist the ends together. Cut one end off and insert into bag to pipe. This saves on clean up and mess. Also handy for when using several icing colors and you have only one piping bag!You can also stripe your plastic wrap and add different colors to your icing!

No mess buttered bowls! Instead of dealing with greasy fingers or wasting wax or paper towels, next time you finish a stick of butter -- don't throw the paper away. Instead, fold in half and store in a zip lock bag in the fridge. Next time you need to prepare a buttered bowl or pan, use the buttered paper.

When cutting bar cookies or cakes, use a plastic knife with serrated edge to get very smooth edges.

Reduce your sugar by 1/4. Turn your oven down by 1/4 degree also. Bake cookies for the amount of time on recipe, they are a bit soft but once cooled you have a wonderful chewy cookie.

If you hate to throw out cookies just because they have gotten a little hard, place them in a ziplock sandwich bag with a piece of bread overnight. The next day you'll have fresh, soft cookies again.

When slicing cylinders of ice box cookies, be sure to roll the dough every other cut so the bottom of the cylinder doesn't flatten out.

More Easy Does It Baking Tips

Softening butter or margarine:
To soften butter, remove wrapper from butter and place on a microwave-safe plate. Microwave 1 stick for 20 to 30 seconds at medium-low power (30%). Be careful not to let butter melt, as melted butter results in a flatter cookie.

Chilling dough:
To speed chilling of dough, place it in the freezer for about 20 minutes for each hour of chilling time indicated in the recipe. If dough is to be rolled out into a rectangle or circle, shape it into that form before chilling to make rolling out the dough much easier.

Using cookie cutters:
To keep dough from sticking to cookie cutters, dip them in flour before cutting out each cookie.

Dutch process cocoa:
A richer, darker cocoa. Dutch process cocoa is more refined and has a mellower flavor. It's available in the baking section of most supermarkets. Regular cocoa can be substitued, but te flavor will be slightly different.

Greasing baking sheets and pans:
Use a thin coating of vegetable shortening to grease baking sheets. For low-fat recipes, spray pan with vegetable cooking spray.

Lining pans:
When a recipe says to line a pan with foil, grease pan first to help keep foil or waxed paper in place. Then grease foil if stated in recipe.

Baking batches of cookies:
For the best results, bake one batch at a time on the center rack of a preheated oven. If baking two batches at a time, space racks evenly in the oven. Allow 1 to 2 inches of space around baking sheet for god air circulation.

Testing for doneness:
Oven temperatures may vary, so check cookies 1 minute before earliest time in a recipe to prevent overbaking.

Cooling cookies:
Remove cookies from pan. Use a spatula to immediately transfer cookies to a wire rack, unless stated otherwise in the recipe. If cookies cool and stick to the an, return the pan to a warm oven for a few minutes to soften cookies.

Cooling baking sheets:
Cool baking sheets between batches co cookies will keep their shape.