Hassle-Free Holiday Baking: 6 Easy Days to Perfect Holiday Cookies

Like many people, I love the idea of ​​making a wide variety of Christmas cookies during the holidays, but I struggle to find the time to do so. As a working mom, cookbook author, and webmaster of Christmas-Cookies.com ( http://www.christmas-cookies.com ), I am a very busy woman, but baking Christmas cookies every year is a must. Over the past few years, out of frustration and necessity, I have developed a system for organizing my Christmas baking. This system allows me to prepare a wide variety of holiday treats without taking too much time out of my busy schedule. By dividing the tasks into 6 days, I can spend a couple of hours each day doing this, and on the 7th day, relax and enjoy giving and eating delicious Christmas cookies. After all, God stayed on the seventh day! You don’t even have to do this on 6 consecutive days. Most of the steps can be done days or even weeks in advance, giving you a huge head start on your vacation.

Day 1

Look through your favorite books, recipe cards, and websites and decide which recipes to make this year. I usually mix my traditional family recipes with a few new recipes for a change. 6-12 different recipes make for a good variety, depending on how many people you have to feed and how much time you have to bake. Write down the name of each recipe on a piece of paper, as well as the source of the recipe so you can look it up later, such as a website URL or page number in a cookbook. Print the recipes you find online and reserve the recipe books or cards you’ll need for easy access on day 2. Things to consider when making your selection are:

-difficulty of the recipe if you are a novice cook or you are going to bake with children,

-cost of special ingredients such as chocolate or nuts, if you are on a budget,

-if the cookies keep well or can be frozen, if you want to bake them in advance.

Day 2

By consulting your list of recipes, create your shopping list. Estimate how much of each ingredient you’ll need in total by adding the cups of butter, the number of eggs, and other common ingredients. Include in your list:

-All the ingredients for the cookies. Check what you have at home so it’s fresh. Nuts and shortening will go rancid after a few months, and baking powder and baking soda will lose their effectiveness, so keep this in mind: out with the old, in with the new! Fresh ingredients are the key to great tasting cookies.

-Any baking tools you may need. Consider replacing old and worn tools or adding a new tool to your collection each year.

-Anything you might need to decorate, such as food coloring, colored sugars and jimmies, or piping icing piping bags.

-Containers such as plastic tubs, cookie tins or even cardboard boxes to store the cookies. Make sure you have containers that are large enough to hold a full batch of each cookie (look at your recipe yield if you’re not sure). If you plan to hand them out as gifts, make sure you have enough containers for each recipient.

-Organize your shopping list by store, such as: grocery store, kitchen or home store, cake decorating supply store, etc.

Day 3

Shopping! Design your action plan so that you go to the supermarket last, so you can get your refrigerated ingredients home as soon as possible. Of course, if you live in a very cold climate, this isn’t much of a concern. When you get home, wash out your new bakeware and put all the non-perishable ingredients in one place so you can easily get them out on day 4. In my house, I have a designated baking cupboard that gives me easy access to everything. I need the days I decide to bake. You can make Day 3 weeks before you plan to bake, as long as:

-Freeze your butter or shortening, and

-Buy perishables like eggs and cream cheese just before you plan to bake.

Day 4

Today you will only be making the dough for your cookies, but not actually baking them! Most cookie dough can be safely refrigerated for days or frozen for weeks before you need to make the cookies. The reason for doing it this way is because when making several different types of cookies at the same time, it is very efficient to make all the dough at once while having all the ingredients and baking tools on hand. If you have a particular recipe that cannot be frozen, please identify it and plan to prepare it on day 5.

Remember to bring refrigerated items like butter, eggs, and cream cheese to room temperature before you start assembling your recipes. Take them out of the fridge at least a couple hours before you plan to bake.

To make this process even easier, I’ve developed an assembly line-style dough-making system, which you can read more about in my cookie assembly line article (http://www.christmascookiesareforgiving.com/assembly .php). Wrap each ball of dough in plastic wrap, identify by writing the name of the recipe on the plastic wrap with a marker pen, and refrigerate or freeze. If this is a slice-and-bake refrigerator cookie, form a log instead of a ball, according to your recipe directions. Make sure you have your prescriptions in an accessible place so you don’t have to search for them on day 5.

Day 5

Today is baking day! Check your recipe: If you have to work with dough at room temperature (as is recommended for most cookie press cookies), roll the dough out ahead of time and allow it to warm to room temperature before you start forming the cookies. If you have frozen your dough, let it thaw in the plastic wrap and only remove it once it has reached your desired temperature. If you remove the plastic while it’s still frozen, condensation will form in the dough and add too much moisture.

Start with the recipes that call for the lowest oven temperature and preheat your oven to that temperature. Remove the dough from the fridge, line your baking sheets with parchment paper (ungreased!), and prepare the dough for baking as directed in your recipe. You may need to roll out the dough and cut it with cookie cutters, or fill it with some kind of filling, or place it in a special pan like a mini muffin pan or cupcake pan, or just slice and bake whatever rolls you want. done on day 4. Once all the cookies that were baked at the lowest temperature are complete, turn the oven temperature up to the next highest temperature to bake those cookies, and so on.

Even if you have some of the handy stackable cooling racks, you’re bound to run out of room to cool multiple batches of cookies. Placing double-thick aluminum foil on the countertop is a good substitute for a cooling rack when you run out of space. Once your cookies are completely cool to room temperature, line your containers with wax paper and place your cookies into the containers one layer at a time, with another sheet of wax paper between each layer. Then put the containers back in the fridge if you won’t be eating them for a day or two, or you can leave them at room temperature overnight. If they aren’t going to be eaten or shipped for several days, you can wrap the entire container in plastic wrap and freeze your cookies for up to 2 weeks. You can freeze them longer if you wrap the cookies in small stacks of 5 or 6 before placing them in their containers. Thaw cookies at room temperature, leaving them wrapped until completely thawed.

Many of your recipes can be completed at this point if no decoration is required.

day 6

Day 6 is the day of decoration. For many of us, this is the most enjoyable step in the cookie baking process. The decoration should always be done no more than 2 days before eating the cookies, ideally the day or even the morning before. You will now make your various frostings and icings, or prepare your melted chocolate for drizzle, or dust with powdered sugar to decorate your cookies as directed. If your cookies are not going to be eaten right away, make sure the icing or melted chocolate has fully set and hardened, a process that can take several hours, before stacking the cookies back into their containers, again separating the layers with sheets of waxed paper. Cookies that have been frosted with a buttercream-type icing cannot be stacked. They should be stored in a single layer with a loose cover of plastic wrap.

day 7

Relax and enjoy your holidays, because your Christmas baking is ready!

Copyright 2004 Mimi Cummins. All rights reserved.

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