Host the Perfect Holiday Playdate and Make the Easiest Cutout Sugar Cookie Recipe Ever (2024)

FAQs

Can you use premade sugar cookie dough for cutouts? ›

Simple metal cookie cutters can transform store-bought slice-and-bake dough into the most festive holiday dessert. For these Christmas cut-outs, all you need is a 16.5-ounce roll of Pillsbury sugar-cookie dough, some flour, and an oven (elbow grease not included).

Sandwich your dough between two sheets of parchment, roll, then freeze; it makes cut-out cookies a breeze! If you plan to store it for only a few hours or days, there's no need to overwrap the baking sheet; for longer storage, wrap the entire baking sheet tightly with plastic wrap before freezing.

Chilling the dough is a key step in making sugar cookies, especially when you're making cut-outs. Even if you're tight on time, make sure to get the dough in the fridge, or even the freezer, even if it's only for a little while. Skip this step, and the dough will be sticky, and much harder to work with.

Use a small, sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut any shape of cookie you like after rolling out the dough. If needed, use an aid to help cut specific shapes: Create a stencil out of cardboard or parchment, wax, or plain paper for simple shapes like hearts, shamrocks, eggs, and flowers.

As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes).

Too much baking powder can cause the cookies to spread too much. The other usual reason is that the cookie dough is very warm when it goes into the oven, which means that the butter melts too quickly as the cookies bake and causes spreading.

Decorate After Baking

In order to add colored sugar to baked cookies, the sugar needs something to adhere to. Icing is the perfect choice. Bake and cool the cookies as directed by the recipe. Ice the very cool cookies with your favorite icing and top with your choice of colored sugar.

Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don't overdo it when you're creaming together the butter and sugar.

"When your dough is refrigerated, the butter hardens. So when you bake them, they spread less and hold their shape better," adds Epperson. "Which means a better likelihood of a soft, chewy cookie in the center." Chilling the dough creates fluffier cookies with better consistency.

What happens if you chill sugar cookie dough too long? ›

After 72 hours, the dough will begin to dry out and you risk it going bad, especially if chilling pre-portioned balls of dough instead of the entire mass of dough. If you want to store longer than 72 hours, see the freezing tips below.

If your cookies are rock hard, the site explains that it's likely due to an over-abundance of sugar, which hardens, darkens, and flattens the cookies as they bake. Bake or Break adds that over-mixing your dough can be the culprit, too.

(In general, you're looking for a smooth dough that can be rolled thin, cuts cleanly and contains little or no baking powder.) If the dough gets too warm, refrigerate or freeze it until it becomes firm again. Your leaf shapes should do just fine.

You can use any cookie dough recipe you choose. But for best results, use one for soft cookies rather than crunchy ones. Step 2: Flour your work surface to roll out your dough. You can roll your dough on a floured countertop or floured parchment paper.

After preparing your cookie dough, refrigerate it for at least 1 hour. This will make the dough easier to cut with cookie cutters (especially intricate ones) and may help prevent your cookies from spreading in the oven.