Whether or not tucked right into a tin for neighbors, artfully organized at a cookie swap, or left on a plate for Santa, cookies are a mainstay of the vacation season. Roll-and-cut classics like Gingerbread Cookies or Rolled Sugar Cookie Cutouts are pleasant to embellish, and sandwich cookies like nutty Raspberry Linzer Cookies or gooey-sweet Alfajores Con Cajeta burst with taste from their decadent fillings.

Regardless of in the event you make the identical tried-and-true household recipes each vacation season or department out into new territory, you want the most effective cookie baking gear to attain the most effective outcomes. Fortunately, our group has spent tons of of hours testing baking tools to search out the most effective instruments to measure, combine, portion, bake, and adorn cookies with ease and precision. Take into account an improve out of your battered cookie sheets or struggling mixer and spend money on a number of helpful objects that can make your cookie baking marathons way more streamlined and fulfilling this vacation season. With these instruments in your arsenal (a lot of that are fairly inexpensive!), your cookies can be as enjoyable and straightforward to make as they’re to eat.

Unsurprisingly, we’re #teamkitchenscale right here at Severe Eats. Particularly whenever you’re baking, a kitchen scale will guarantee essentially the most correct measurements of elements, with the added bonus of reducing means down on cleanup—you may weigh every ingredient proper into the blending bowl with out the necessity to soiled a bunch of measuring cups. (Nonetheless, in the event you do choose measuring by quantity, we suggest utilizing certainly one of our examined and accepted measuring cups.) Streamline your vacation cookie baking and guarantee constant outcomes each time with our profitable scale by OXO. It includes a pull-out show that makes it simple to learn, even with extra-large mixing bowls on prime, and its power-saving standby mode holds onto the newest weight measurement for a full quarter-hour in case you need to step away.

While you’re measuring out elements and mixing collectively cookie dough, you’ll want a set of roomy, sturdy mixing bowls. Metallic bowls are lighter and simpler to retailer than glass and are the popular bowl materials of most Severe Eats staffers. This no-frills set by Vollrath is favored by restaurant professionals (and by us in our assessment!) and has 5 large, shallow bowls that enable for straightforward stirring, mixing, and pouring. They’re tremendous low-cost and can final a lifetime.

Many cookie recipes begin with creaming collectively butter and sugar till mild and fluffy. Accomplish that with ease utilizing our profitable hand mixer by Breville, which has rubber-coated beaters that scrape the edges of the bowl to combine cookie dough successfully, powerfully, and remarkably quietly. This mixer is comfy to carry and has plenty of useful extras, like a digital show with a built-in timer, a pause button, a light-weight that shines into the blending bowl, and a snap-on case for storing the attachments and twine.

Should you bake cookies typically or in giant portions, you might wish to improve from a hand mixer to a stand mixer. Put money into the most effective with this secure and highly effective mannequin by KitchenAid. Its seven-quart capability and well-designed attachments enable it to deal with giant and small batches, and its silicone-lined paddle is ideal for scraping and mixing sticky cookie dough. Should you solely bake cookies in the course of the holidays, think about our decide for informal bakers, the extra inexpensive KitchenAid Artisan Sequence 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer.

For portioning balls of cookie dough (or meatballs! or falafel!), no kitchen needs to be with no portion scoop. Additionally known as dishers or cookie scoops, these scoops make portioning sticky dough quicker, neater, and completely constant from cookie to cookie. This red-handled #24 scoop from Winco doles out three tablespoons at a time, excellent for medium- to large-sized cookies, and the purple-handled #40 scoop is nice for petite tasks at 1.5 tablespoons per scoop.

Should you’re rolling dough for cut-out cookies, you’ll want a wonderfully even thickness. Thick and skinny spots create cookies that can bake at totally different charges—and also you’ll threat a few of them burning on the baking sheet whereas others are underbaked. Should you’ve struggled to attain stage, constant slabs of dough previously, do that dowel-style rolling pin. Easy in design however tremendous efficient, this pin rolled out essentially the most even dough of the bunch in our testing of rolling pins. Desire a French-style tapered pin? Mais oui! The J.Okay. Adams FRP-1 Maple French Rolling Pin additionally carried out superbly in our testing.

Lining your baking sheet with parchment paper not solely supplies a floor that even the sugariest cookie dough received’t keep on with, however it additionally helps to stop scorching and makes cleanup fast and straightforward. Save your self the frustration of tearing off uneven strips of rolled-up parchment and improve to pre-cut, rectangular parchment paper sheets which are completely sized to suit a half-sheet baking pan. These heavy-duty silicone-coated sheets from King Arthur Baking Firm will be reused a number of instances—good info in the event you’re involved about waste.

This handy two-pack of our profitable baking sheet will maintain you cranking out a number of batches of cookies. In our testing of baking sheets, cookies got here out constantly golden brown and evenly baked utilizing these sturdy pans, and their rolled rims had been simple and comfy to grip and maintain onto. They’re fairly moderately priced, too. (Bonus: Add a snap-on lid and retailer your cookies proper on the baking sheet!)

If you wish to skip utilizing parchment paper however nonetheless have your cookies launch cleanly from the pan, think about a nonstick baking sheet. In our assessments, cookies baked on the Cuisinart pan got here out evenly golden brown and slid off simply. The cookies did end up a smidge darker than these baked on lighter coloured pans, so verify on the sooner aspect of the baking vary to ensure they’re completely baked.

As soon as your attractive cookies come out of the oven, they’ll want a spot to land and funky off. In our testing of cooling racks, cookies chilled rapidly on this rack with out warping, and spatulas slid effortlessly over it with out snagging. The dearth of middle help in its design additionally made the rack simpler to wash, an enormous win in our books. It was the most cost effective wire rack we examined—get a number of in the event you’re making plenty of cookies!

To embellish cookies with icing, seize a set of those small piping baggage. They’re known as tipless baggage since you don’t want a piping tip to make use of them. Many cookie decorators will merely snip off the very finish and that provides sufficient precision to stipulate even essentially the most difficult cookie shapes. Should you do want to use a tip with them, attain for a Wilton or Ateco element spherical tip in measurement 2 or 3, excellent for piping borders of thick royal icing on cookies earlier than flooding them with a thinner icing.

Should you’re spreading frosting or ganache excessive of your cookies or a filling sandwiched in between them, a small offset spatula is way more efficient than a butter knife. It’s additionally nice for shimmying underneath rolled-out sugar cookie dough to switch cutouts to a baking sheet or to carry delicate cookies off of the sheet after baking. This 4.5-inch mini offset spatula from Ateco is nimble, versatile, and cheap.

For essentially the most vibrant colours of frosting and icing, put down these bottles of liquid meals coloring from the grocery retailer and spend money on what the professionals use. Gel pastes are ultra-concentrated, so a number of drops are all you want for vivid colour, and this set by AmeriColor has a pleasant vary of hues. 

FAQs 

What’s the distinction between a cookie sheet and a baking sheet?

A flat, rimless cookie sheet has one very brief, angled edge and is open on its different three sides. A rimmed baking sheet is a flat pan with one-inch edges on all sides, and is mostly a regular measurement (for instance, a half-sheet pan is eighteen inches lengthy and 13 inches large). Whereas a cookie sheet is ok to make use of for baking cookies, it’s restricted in different functions. We suggest investing in a extra versatile rimmed baking sheet as an alternative, which may additionally roast greens, bake a sheet cake, or accommodate a whole dinner’s value of meals.

Is it higher to bake cookies on parchment paper or a silicone baking mat?

We suggest baking cookies on parchment paper versus silicone. Silicone impacts how warmth is carried out to the dough, and its nonstick floor permits for extra unfold, inflicting the cookies to turn out to be dense and greasy with a touch of bitterness from extreme browning. Save your silicone baking mat for sticky tasks like making nut brittles or syrupy granolas.

Can I freeze cookie dough?

Most cookie doughs freeze effectively if you wish to break up your vacation cookie baking into levels or take pleasure in smaller batches of fresh-baked cookies on demand. Portion your cookies as directed onto wax or parchment paper, then fold them into packets and place them into zip-top baggage. The cookie dough parts will be refrigerated for as much as every week or frozen for 3 to 6 months. It’s a good suggestion to label the luggage with the dough sort, the date you made it, and the baking directions in order that they’re simple to bake off rapidly or give away for others to bake and revel in.

Why We’re the Consultants

• Afton Cyrus is a meals blogger, recipe developer, culinary teacher, and freelance meals author and editor with a ardour for baking. She spent eight years as a take a look at cook dinner and editor at America’s Check Kitchen earlier than turning into a contributor to Severe Eats in 2023. Since then, she has reviewed hand mixers, liquid measuring cups, fondue pots, and stress canners.
• Her recipes and meals writing seem on-line for Severe Eats, King Arthur Baking Firm, and different shops, and in print in award-winning and New York Instances-bestselling cookbooks for America’s Check Kitchen and Ten Pace Press.
• At Severe Eats, we recurrently revisit our examined critiques to make sure our findings stay present.