Count on cookies to sweeten holiday gift giving

It wouldn’t be holiday season without scratch-made cookies. Whether baking them for guests, a school teacher, as gifts, or simply to fill a home with buttery scents and children’s laughter, every family needs a few go-to recipes to share between generations.

A good cookie plate offers a variety of textures and flavors, with a mix of crunchy and chewy cookies as well as a few types of bars, says Melanie Wanders, a baking and pastry instructor at King Arthur Flour’s Baking School at the Bread Lab. Once you have a few go-to dough recipes, you can modify them to express your taste or appeal to a guest’s.

“Once you have a dough you’re familiar with, you can adjust it with spices, nuts, or fruit,” Wanders says. “I like reinventing classic recipes. We recently made Chinese five-spice snickerdoodles in class.”

Know your dough

Holiday bakers need to consider which cookie types last the longest if they’re baking cookies as gifts. If there will be a time delay between baking day, gift day, and the day when the fortunate recipient finally eats their sweet treats, it’s best to stick with a butter-based cookie dough – one where the recipe calls for creaming butter and sugar together. Such dough – common for sugar cookies, ginger cookies, oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies – will keep its crunch the longest.

“Dryer, crisper, crunchier cookies do better long-term,” she notes. “High-moisture cookies made with lots of eggs, with fillings, or topped with buttercream or wetter frosting types won’t last as long.”

If you’re planning to gift cookies, consider shortbreads, sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and lightweight American-style macaroons, which retain their crunch for up to two weeks. Biscotti, if kept in a sealed container, keep their texture for up to four weeks.

Fix the frosting

Frosting and decorating holiday cookies makes them festive and delicious, and is a fun activity that adults can share with kids. But as with dough types, frosting types vary and impact cookies’ shelf life.

Buttercream frostings, while delicious, don’t keep long, Wanders notes. This is fine if you expect your cookies to disappear quickly, of course. For longer-lasting frosted cookies, consider using a recipe for “royal icing,” an icing type made with egg whites and sugar. This smooth white frosting puts a nice glaze and hard finish on cookies, a perfect bed for sprinkles or other décor.

Freeze-and-heat approaches

Many home cooks freeze raw cookie dough, so that formed cookies are on hand but can be fresh-baked as needed. When working with butter-based cookie doughs, Wanders recommends forming balls of dough, freezing them for one hour on a baking sheet, then transferring them to freezer bags. When ready to bake, add 2 to 5 minutes additional cooking time to account for the cookies starting from a frozen state.

Moister cookies are harder to freeze, since key ingredients such as eggs or lemon curd may lose their texture. However, Wanders notes, if you’re making multi-component cookies involving butter-based dough (sandwich cookies, for instance) you can always freeze the dough and wait to prepare the filling until baking time, storing it in the fridge until it’s time to bake.

Ask a baker

Home bakers can tap King Arthur Flour’s Bakers Hotline for extra help with techniques or recipe rescues online or at 855-371-BAKE. Or they can enroll in classes through the Baking School calendar – offering students tips on the best baking techniques.

The King Arthur Flour Baking School welcomes all bakers, no matter your skill level or baking interest. Classes range from introductory demonstrations for beginners to intensive week-long professional courses, with a wide variety of hands-on classes for adults and children.

Five-spice snickerdoodles

Yield: about 24 cookies

Ingredients

¾ cup (6 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

¾ cup (5 5/8 ounces) brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup (3 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

¾ cup (3 ounces) King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour

¾ cup (3 ounces) oat flour

¼ cup (1 ¾ ounces) sugar

2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the butter, brown sugar, baking powder and salt on medium speed until combined.
• Add the eggs and vanilla, mixing to combine.
• Add the flours, mixing just until combined.
• In a small bowl, combine the sugar and five-spice powder
• Using a tablespoon scoop, scoop the dough into balls, roll in your hands, then roll in the sugar/spice mixture.
• Place the dough balls about 2 inches apart on the prepared pans.
• Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until set and just starting to brown around the edges.
• Allow the cookies to cool for a few minutes on the pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.