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Baking holiday cookies is a tradition some look forward to every year, but there’s a lot of room for error in the kitchen. The food editors for Martha Stewart have made literally thousands of holiday cookies over the years, so they really know what they’re doing. Now they’re passing along some tricks and tips and her test kitchen’s team is sharing their secrets to help you bake your best batch yet.
- Measure ingredients the right way - Baking is as much chemistry as it is art, so this isn’t the time to eyeball it. Use a dry measure cup for dry ingredients, but don’t scoop flour in, spoon it in, pile it on, then level it off with a knife.
- Work with room temperature ingredients - For properly creamed cookie dough, you need eggs to be at room temperature and butter to be softened. If you didn’t leave them on the counter for a few hours to achieve this, there are some speedy cheats to use. For eggs, fill a bowl with warm water and let them sit for up to 10 minutes, until they don’t feel chilled to the touch when you take them out. For butter, dice or grate it on a small plate to speed up the process.
- Whisk, don’t sift - When recipes call for sifting dry ingredients, these experts say whisking works just as well, except for cake flour, which tends to stick together and should be shaken through a sieve.
- Set timers - When making multiple batches or recipes, it’s easy to lose track of when something needs to come out of the oven. That’s where multiple timers will save you.
- Take precise temperatures - Buy an oven thermometer and replace it every year because they get less accurate over time.
- Rotate cookie sheets during baking - To get even results, rotate the sheets from top rack to bottom and back to front halfway through baking.
- Prepare your nuts - First, taste them to make sure they’re not rancid. Then toast them to enhance their flavor and aroma. And chop them with a serrated knife, which works well on their uneven surface.
Source: Martha Stewart