You asked for it
Beth Whitlock from Nashville is going to be making decorated cut-out cookies for friends. “Are there any roll-out tips you can give me since I’m new at this?” she writes.
Let the cookie baking begin! As we continue the fast-paced march toward family gatherings and the year end, cookies hold a place of honor that is rivaled by few other desserts.
These individual servings of sugary goodness are perfect for a quick pickme-up or meal ending.
With everything from elaborate and time-consuming to drop or slice-andbake, you can literally have a cookie for any occasion. My favorites ebb and flow with my mood, but the ones I routinely bake when time is short are bar cookies.
These are the original bake-and-take cookies thanks to the pan that goes from the oven to the cooling rack to the car. They are ridiculously versatile and can vary greatly. The batter can be pourable and cake-like or more dense and pressed into the pan. What they have in common is they are cooled after baking, then cut into slivers, bars, rectangles or diamonds to serve.
Start out right by lining the pan with greased parchment paper or aluminum foil. Or you can use non-stick foil with great results. The trick is to use long strips so the extra is hanging off the ends of the pan.
This allows you to use it as handles Beth, here is what I do: Wrap a portion of the dough in plastic wrap and chill it at least a couple of hours in the refrigerator. This will make it firm enough to roll. Then work with one portion at a time, keeping the others in the refrigerator. Only flour your work surface very lightly so you aren’t pulling excess flour into the cookie dough. for removing the baked cookies from the pan to a cutting board. It is the easiest way to cut them and is particularly nice if you are baking them in a metal pan by eliminating cut marks on the bottom. Since most bar cookies pull away slightly from the pan edges, this is an easy next step.
Because bar cookies tend to be more substantial, they are great for withstanding the rigors of shipping to friends and relatives far away. This is not the case for fragile cookies that will more than likely break apart during the journey.
Tammy Algood is the author of five cookbooks and can be seen on “Volunteer Gardener” on PBS stations in Tennessee. Follow her at hauteflavor.com