The 13 Greatest Vacation Cookie Baking Instruments of 2024, Examined & Reviewed

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 brighten, and sandwich cookies like nutty Raspberry Linzer Cookies or gooey-sweet Alfajores Con Cajeta burst with taste from their decadent fillings.

Irrespective of should you make the identical tried-and-true household recipes each vacation season or department out into new territory, you want the very best cookie baking gear to realize the very best outcomes. Fortunately, our workforce has spent a whole lot of hours testing baking gear to seek out the very best instruments to measure, combine, portion, bake, and beautify cookies with ease and precision. Contemplate an improve out of your battered cookie sheets or struggling mixer and spend money on just a few helpful gadgets that may make your cookie baking marathons rather more streamlined and pleasant this vacation season. With these instruments in your arsenal (a lot of that are fairly inexpensive!), your cookies shall be as enjoyable and simple to make as they’re to eat.

Unsurprisingly, we’re #teamkitchenscale right here at Critical Eats. Particularly whenever you’re baking, a kitchen scale will guarantee probably the most correct measurements of components, with the added bonus of chopping means down on cleanup—you possibly can weigh every ingredient proper into the blending bowl with out the necessity to soiled a bunch of measuring cups. (Nevertheless, should you do favor measuring by quantity, we suggest utilizing one in all our examined and authorised measuring cups.) Streamline your vacation cookie baking and guarantee constant outcomes each time with our profitable scale by OXO. It encompasses a pull-out show that makes it simple to learn, even with extra-large mixing bowls on high, and its power-saving standby mode holds onto the latest weight measurement for a full quarter-hour in case it’s a must to step away.

Once you’re measuring out components and mixing collectively cookie dough, you’ll want a set of roomy, sturdy mixing bowls. Steel bowls are lighter and simpler to retailer than glass and are the popular bowl materials of most Critical Eats staffers. This no-frills set by Vollrath is favored by restaurant professionals (and by us in our overview!) and has 5 vast, shallow bowls that permit for simple 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 gentle 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 snug to carry and has a number of useful extras, like a digital show with a built-in timer, a pause button, a lightweight that shines into the blending bowl, and a snap-on case for storing the attachments and twine.

When you bake cookies typically or in giant portions, it’s possible you’ll need to improve from a hand mixer to a stand mixer. Put money into the very best with this steady and highly effective mannequin by KitchenAid. Its seven-quart capability and well-designed attachments permit it to sort out giant and small batches, and its silicone-lined paddle is ideal for scraping and mixing sticky cookie dough. When you solely bake cookies in the course of the holidays, take into account our decide for informal bakers, the extra inexpensive KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer.

For portioning balls of cookie dough (or meatballs! or falafel!), no kitchen must be and not using a portion scoop. Additionally known as dishers or cookie scoops, these scoops make portioning sticky dough sooner, neater, and completely constant from cookie to cookie. This red-handled #24 scoop from Winco doles out three tablespoons at a time, good for medium- to large-sized cookies, and the purple-handled #40 scoop is nice for petite tasks at 1.5 tablespoons per scoop.

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

Lining your baking sheet with parchment paper not solely gives a floor that even the sugariest cookie dough received’t follow, but it surely additionally helps to forestall scorching and makes cleanup fast and simple. Save your self the frustration of tearing off uneven strips of rolled-up parchment and improve to pre-cut, rectangular parchment paper sheets which can be completely sized to suit a half-sheet baking pan. These heavy-duty silicone-coated sheets from King Arthur Baking Firm might be reused just a few occasions—good info should you’re involved about waste.

This handy two-pack of our profitable baking sheet will hold you cranking out a number of batches of cookies. In our testing of baking sheets, cookies got here out persistently 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, take into account 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 prove a smidge darker than these baked on lighter coloured pans, so verify on the sooner facet 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 shortly 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 scrub, a giant win in our books. It was the most cost effective wire rack we examined—get just a few should you’re making a number of cookies!

To brighten cookies with icing, seize a set of those small piping bags. 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 offers sufficient precision to stipulate even probably the most difficult cookie shapes. When you do want to use a tip with them, attain for a Wilton or Ateco element spherical tip in measurement 2 or 3, good for piping borders of thick royal icing on cookies earlier than flooding them with a thinner icing.

When you’re spreading frosting or ganache excessive of your cookies or a filling sandwiched in between them, a small offset spatula is rather 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 raise delicate cookies off of the sheet after baking. This 4.5-inch mini offset spatula from Ateco is nimble, versatile, and cheap.

For probably 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 just a few drops are all you want for vivid shade, 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 normal measurement (for instance, a half-sheet pan is eighteen inches lengthy and 13 inches vast). Whereas a cookie sheet is okay 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 might additionally roast greens, bake a sheet cake, or accommodate a whole dinner’s price 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 well if you wish to break up your vacation cookie baking into phases or get pleasure from 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 might be refrigerated for as much as every week or frozen for 3 to 6 months. It’s a good suggestion to label the baggage with the dough kind, the date you made it, and the baking directions in order that they’re simple to bake off shortly or give away for others to bake and revel in.

Why We’re the Consultants

• Afton Cyrus is a food 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 Take a look at Kitchen earlier than turning into a contributor to Critical Eats in 2023. Since then, she has reviewed hand mixers, liquid measuring cups, fondue pots, and pressure canners.
• Her recipes and meals writing seem on-line for Critical Eats, King Arthur Baking Firm, and different retailers, and in print in award-winning and New York Instances-bestselling cookbooks for America’s Take a look at Kitchen and Ten Pace Press.
• At Critical Eats, we recurrently revisit our examined critiques to make sure our findings stay present.