The 13 Finest 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 if you happen to make the identical tried-and-true household recipes each vacation season or department out into new territory, you want the most effective cookie baking gear to realize the most effective outcomes. Fortunately, our crew has spent lots of of hours testing baking tools to seek out the most effective instruments to measure, combine, portion, bake, and embellish cookies with ease and precision. Think about an improve out of your battered cookie sheets or struggling mixer and put money into a couple of useful gadgets that may make your cookie baking marathons way more streamlined and pleasant this vacation season. With these instruments in your arsenal (a lot of that are fairly reasonably priced!), your cookies can be as enjoyable and simple to make as they’re to eat.

Unsurprisingly, we’re #teamkitchenscale right here at Severe Eats. Particularly if you’re baking, a kitchen scale will guarantee essentially the most correct measurements of components, with the added bonus of reducing means down on cleanup—you’ll be able to weigh every ingredient proper into the blending bowl with out the necessity to soiled a bunch of measuring cups. (Nonetheless, if you happen to do desire measuring by quantity, we suggest utilizing considered one of our examined and permitted measuring cups.) Streamline your vacation cookie baking and guarantee constant outcomes each time with our profitable scale by OXO. It contains a pull-out show that makes it straightforward to learn, even with extra-large mixing bowls on prime, and its power-saving standby mode holds onto the newest weight measurement for a full quarter-hour in case you must step away.

If 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 Severe Eats staffers. This no-frills set by Vollrath is favored by restaurant professionals (and by us in our evaluate!) and has 5 extensive, 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. Achieve this 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 comfy to carry and has a lot of useful extras, like a digital show with a built-in timer, a pause button, a light-weight that shines into the blending bowl, and a snap-on case for storing the attachments and twine.

In the event you bake cookies usually or in massive portions, chances are you’ll wish to improve from a hand mixer to a stand mixer. Put money into the most effective with this steady and highly effective mannequin by KitchenAid. Its seven-quart capability and well-designed attachments permit it to sort out massive and small batches, and its silicone-lined paddle is ideal for scraping and mixing sticky cookie dough. In the event you solely bake cookies in the course of the holidays, think about our choose for informal bakers, the extra reasonably priced KitchenAid Artisan Sequence 5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer.

For portioning balls of cookie dough (or meatballs! or falafel!), no kitchen needs to be with no portion scoop. Additionally referred to as dishers or cookie scoops, these scoops make portioning sticky dough quicker, 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.

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

Lining your baking sheet with parchment paper not solely supplies a floor that even the sugariest cookie dough gained’t follow, but it surely additionally helps to stop 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 are completely sized to suit a half-sheet baking pan. These heavy-duty silicone-coated sheets from King Arthur Baking Firm could be reused a couple of occasions—good data if you happen to’re involved about waste.

This handy two-pack of our profitable baking sheet will preserve 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 straightforward and cozy 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, think about 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 examine on the sooner aspect 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 shortage of middle assist in its design additionally made the rack simpler to scrub, an enormous win in our books. It was the most affordable wire rack we examined—get a couple of if you happen to’re making a lot of cookies!

To embellish cookies with icing, seize a set of those small piping luggage. They’re referred to as tipless luggage 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 provides sufficient precision to stipulate even essentially the most sophisticated cookie shapes. In the event 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.

In the event you’re spreading frosting or ganache excessive of your cookies or a filling sandwiched in between them, a small offset spatula is way 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 essentially the most vibrant colours of frosting and icing, put down these bottles of liquid meals coloring from the grocery retailer and put money into what the professionals use. Gel pastes are ultra-concentrated, so a couple of drops are all you want for vivid colour, 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 regular measurement (for instance, a half-sheet pan is eighteen inches lengthy and 13 inches extensive). Whereas a cookie sheet is ok 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 may additionally roast greens, bake a sheet cake, or accommodate a complete 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 performed 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 nicely if you wish to break up your vacation cookie baking into levels or take pleasure in 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 luggage. The cookie dough parts could be refrigerated for as much as per 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 so that they’re straightforward to bake off shortly or give away for others to bake and revel in.

Why We’re the Specialists

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