Mary Ann Esposito’s top tips for baking & freezing holiday cookies

It’s not too early to begin making holiday cookies that you can freeze! Here are my tips:

1) Invest in parchment paper to bake your cookies on; no greasing, no mess and the cookies release nicely from the baking sheet. Scrape off any crumbs on the parchment paper when done baking and save the paper for the next tine you bake. I reuse parchment over and over.

2) Make cookies that freeze well like biscotti, drop cookies and any type that do not require frosting.

3) Cookie batters are best made with room temperature ingredients; butter, eggs, fillings and flour should all be at room temperature for best results with the cookie dough.

4) Freeze cookies in groups of 4 and wrap each group separately; that way you can take out the amount you want. Place the groups in plastic bags; indicate the date on the bag and freeze flat on the freezer shelf.

5) Bar cookies freeze well; for a pan of brownies for instance, bake them in a foil lined pan and allow the foil to overhang the pan; when the brownies are baked, simply lift the ends of the foil to remove the brownies without leaving half of them behind! When ready to eat, cut them when frozen for a neat even cut. This also works well for a jam-filled bar cookie.

6) Use the right measuring cups when making cookie dough; glass measures are for liquids and metal and plastic are for dry ingredients.

7) Frequently wet your hands when making round ball type cookies; this will help keep your hands from caking with the dough.

8) Let the cookie sheets cool between baking so the dough does not spread from the residual heat.

9) When recipes call for extract, make sure the bottle says 100% pure extract; flavorings are altogether a different thing, being mostly made of water and artificial ingredients. Extracts have to be made with 35% alcohol.

10) If baking with convection heat, lower the oven temperature by 25 degrees; so if the recipe says bake at 350F and you want to use convection, then bake at 325F.