Tips for Baking Perfect Cookies

Our chilly autumn days easily lend themselves to holing up indoors. To keep from going stir crazy, we turn to baking – naturally. There is nothing more comforting than biting into a warm, freshly baked cookie. Between rainy weekends, school bake sales, and those swiftly-approaching holidays, we thought you might enjoy our best cookie baking tips.Tip #1  Most cookie recipes call for room temperature butter, but in the excitement of diving into a recipe it's easy to forget to take the butter out of the fridge ahead of time. For those moments, simply slice the butter into smaller pieces, layer evenly on a plate, and leave it on the counter until it gives with the press of a finger – about half an hour.Tip #2  The best cookie sheets are the heavy-gauge, stainless steel variety. Dark-colored cookie sheets may cause your cookies to over-brown on the bottom.Tip #3  Baking cookies one sheet at a time is generally recommend for thorough cooking, but that's also time intensive. If you're baking more than one sheet at a time, rotate them from front to back and top to bottom halfway through the cooking time.Tip #4  Cold dough is best for making sugar cookie cut outs. If your dough warmed up with handling, cover it in plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge until it's well-chilled - about two hours. Once you're ready to work with it, keep any unused portion refrigerated until it's needed. On that note, cookie dough should be slightly cool before it goes into the oven, since warm cookie dough spreads excessively as it bakes.Tip #5  We like using a small, spring-loaded ice cream scoop to portion out cookie dough. This keeps the cookies a nice, uniform size and helps them bake evenly.Tip #6  Avoid cooling your cookies directly on the cookie sheet, as this causes them to overcook. Instead, gently place them on a cooling rack once you've pulled them from the oven.Now that you're ready to bake up the perfect batch, pick up More from Macrina for Leslie's favorite cookie recipes!