Spiral Sugar Cookies Recipe - Rachel Cooks® (2024)

FAQs

Why do people poke fork holes in sugar cookies? ›

You can use a fork or a dough docker to prick small holes all over the surface of the dough. By venting the steam, docking keeps the dough from billowing or heaving as it bakes. It's an important step for crisp cookies or that are baked all in a single sheet and not cut up until they come out of the oven.

For this technique, you'll want to decorate your cookies before baking. We recommend using decorative sugar (also known as colored sanding sugar), Turbinado sugar (coarse golden sugar) or pearl sugar (coarse clear sugar). It all sounds super fancy but it's really very easy!

Start by outlining the cookie with piping-consistency icing in any color you choose. Then, use flooding-consistency icing to fill the outlined area, starting by flooding around the edges and working your way towards the center. If the flooding is inconsistent in thickness, redistribute the wet icing with a toothpick.

To get perfectly soft, chewy cookies, you need to beat the eggs, butter, and sugar for up to five minutes.

Additionally, if you add too much food coloring, you can get what's commonly referred to in the cookie world as 'butter bleed'. Butter bleed is when your cookie looks great decorated and then you come back hours later (or the next day) and notice what looks like grease stains seeping in.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies.

Applying sugar to steaming hot cookies would also work, or sprinkling some sugar on top of the cookie and then spraying it with some water would also work, which you could also repeat and layer.

Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating. I like to decorate cookies directly on baking sheets so I can stick the entire baking sheet in the refrigerator to help set the icing. So place the cooled cookies back on baking sheets.

Sugar cookies, like most cookies, can be frozen, but if you are planning to decorate your sugar cookies with frosting, freeze before decorating. As with most cookies, you can freeze sugar cookie dough or freeze baked sugar cookies.

What can I use if I don't have cookie cutters? ›

A standard drinking glass with about a 3-inch opening is a great stand-in for cookie cutters. Round cookies can be decorated in a variety of ways to add festive color to any cookie tray.

Slide parchment onto an unrimmed cookie sheet and chill the dough until very firm, at least 30 minutes, before cutting. Roll remaining dough in same manner and keep in the fridge until you are ready to cut it. Chilled dough cuts more precisely, clings less to cutters, and retains its shape better during baking.

1. Dry Pasta. Pasta is one of those dishes you can make for a hearty Christmas spread, but they can also be used to stamp lovely patterns into cookie dough. Penne, rotelle, and ribbon pasta are just some great examples to use for imprinting due to their unique shapes.

So by poking the holes in, the cookie. will ensure that the cookie shape does not spread, which sugar cookies love to do.

The reason is that peanut butter cookie dough is dense, and unpressed, each cookie will not cook evenly. Using a fork to press the dough is a convenience of tool; bakers can also use a cookie shovel (spatula).

My trusted method for getting ripply, jagged-topped cookies has been simple–scoop the cookie dough with two forks, or as I like to call it, forking your dough.

Poke doughy cookies like you would a cake - If you like to make thick, doughy cookies like choc chip or various types of shortbread, you can poke it. Using a metal skewer or the tip of a narrow knife, poke one of the biscuits. If the object you poked with comes out covered in dough, the cookie is still undercooked.