Follow this one simple trick for easy sugar cookies to keep your kitchen neat and tidy while baking homemade cookies!
As anyone who bakes will tell you, it’s a messy business. Flour and confectioner’s sugar are especially terrible culprits of a baking mess. The rewards to baking far outweigh the pitfalls however, so we continue in spite of the mess. I always appreciate it whenever I happen upon a tip like the easy sugar cookies prep to add to my kitchen routine. I discovered one recently that gave me a “Why didn’t I think of that?” moment (you know those right?) and I will hang on to it from here on out. What is it? Parchment paper. Before you decide to give up on this post because you already know about parchment paper, give me a few more lines. This is not your average everyday, use it to line your baking pans mess-free baking tip. No, this is much more clever.
Often times I find myself taking the road “less expensive” in lieu of the road “more convenient.” This is because I like to save where ever I can and prefer not to spend money when I don’t have to. Things like parchment paper never really made it onto my grocery list until I started to attempt to bake macarons (and we will save that story for later.) I would simply flour my counter top, roll out my cookie dough, and do it the old fashioned way, with my great-grandmother’s wooden rolling pin in hand! Then I would grease my baking sheets and cross my fingers the cookies didn’t stick.
Consider Exhibit A: My Kitchen (see photos below.) The first thing you probably notice is how small it is. The second thing is how much counter space I DO NOT have. When we first moved in it seemed microscopic in comparison to our last kitchen, but I have grown accustomed to it now. Except of course when it comes to baking cookies and rolling out my dough. I feel the pinch then. At this point any kind of tip that helps me get the most out of my small space and makes the least amount of mess possible is a great thing. This is where the easy sugar cookie prep comes into action. Are you ready?
Easy Sugar Cookies Prep: Using your parchment paper, sandwich your cookie dough in between two layers, then roll it out.
How easy and simple is that? Crazy stuff. And if you are one of those ladies who like super uniform dough thickness, throw in two dowel rods on either side to keep things rolling at an even level. Bam! Two tips in row!
Follow my quick and dirty mess-free baking tip pictorial below to see how we accomplished zero counter-top cleanup. Step by step instructions follow.
Step 1: Lay down a large piece of parchment paper onto your work surface. Place your cookie dough on top of it and flatten it slightly. Then place another large piece of parchment paper on top.
Step 2: Using your rolling pin, roll out your dough as you would normally do to the desired height, taking care not to squish it out from between the two pieces of parchment.
Step 3: Place your parchment and dough into the refrigerator for 30 minutes to let it firm up before cutting. Remove the dough once it is sufficiently cold and cut it into desired shapes using cookies cutters. Work quickly to ensure you finish cutting before the dough warms back up. This will ensure you have clean edges and makes it much easier to move to a baking pan.
Step 4: Quickly move your cookies to the prepared baking pans, placing them 2 inches apart from one another and baking for the specified time on the recipe. Click here for my Perfect Sugar Cookie recipe and tutorial.
Step 5: While your cookies are baking, turn around to clean up and quickly and happily discover a mess-free surface. Throw away the parchment paper. Take a break while waiting for the oven timer!
This easy sugar cookies tip was brought to you by Heather + Jason of Hello My Sweet, stop by and visit us sometime!
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