Issue Date: November 19, 2006
Holiday cookies: 9 hot tips
A top baking pro and author offers advice for extra-special treats.
Wax paper or plastic wrap makes prepping dough for cutouts a snap.
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Never mind the fruitcake and fancy yule logs. When it comes to holiday baking, there's nothing like cookies, says Dorie Greenspan, one of the nation's top bakers and author of a new book, Baking: From My Home to Yours (Houghton Mifflin, $40).
"Of all the many kinds of sweets that I bake, cookies have the place closest to my heart," says Greenspan, whose expertise in the kitchen qualified her to work with Julia Child on the best seller Baking with Julia. "Cookies are easy and terrific fun to make, great-looking, good keepers and universal crowd pleasers."
Some simple techniques and the equipment you use can make the difference between mediocre and memorable holiday goodies. Here, Greenspan shares some tips for cookie baking:
Read the recipe all the way through first. It's a hassle to discover that you're short of eggs when you're in the middle of mixing up a batch of great cookies.
Beat eggs into the dough one at a time, but don't over-beat. The sugar-egg mixture should not be fluffy because all that air will puff up the cookies and then make them sink during baking.
Use a light hand when you add dry ingredients. Less is more: Mix just until the flour disappears into the dough, then stop.
Roll cookie dough for cutout cookies between two sheets of wax paper or plastic film instead of on a flour-dusted board. It's the fastest, easiest, cleanest way to roll, and it eliminates those pesky stuck-to-the-counter splotches.
Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats for even baking and easy cleanup. No more pans to wash and butter between batches.
Line brownie or bar cookie pans with buttered aluminum foil, or try the new non-stick foil. Use long strips of foil, leaving extra at either end of the pan to use as "handles" for moving the brownies from the pan to a cutting board. This is a neat way to avoid cutting brownies in the pan and leaves a cleaner pan.
Cool the baking sheets between batches -- always, always, always! You don't want the dough to melt before it hits the oven.
Unless you're told to cool the cookies on the baking sheet, lift the just-baked treats with a large, flat spatula onto cooling racks that are about 1/2 inch high. You want air to circulate around the cookies so their bottoms don't get soggy.
If you've got crisp, crunchy cookies and moist, chewy cookies, pack them separately. If you pack them together, they'll all get soft in short order.
Jane Harvey
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