You can skip
softening your butter. Whether you make
cookie dough in a stand mixer, with a hand-mixer or (my favorite) in a food
processor, you can save time by cutting your cold butter into chunks and
letting the machine bang it together with the sugar until soft. It will be bumpy at first and you’ll need to
scrape a few times to make sure no nubby cold bits remain but, within a minute
or two, the butter is just right for the rest of the ingredients. It doesn’t just save time, it makes for a
cooler, firmer dough that’s going to take less time to chill. You can skip the refrigerator chill. And…
You can skip
flouring your counter. As soon as my
cookie dough is made, I roll it out between two large sheets of parchment paper
to the desired thickness and it’s a total breeze. No flouring (which can toughen the dough). No
pre-chilling (which takes so much more time). No fighting the cold dough flat (which makes
us grumpy). Then, I slide this onto a
baking sheet and pop it in the freezer for 15 minutes (or a day, or a week, or
months until needed), until firm and cut the cookies in clean, sharp shapes
from this. I then use these parchment sheets
to line my baking sheets. (No waste!) Extra dough scraps can be easily rerolled and
re-chilled the same way, with no erosion in dough quality because it doesn’t
absorb extra flour. Bonus: No floury mess to clean up.
A couple
extra tips: As you roll your dough between parchment sheets, some creases will
form; pull the sheet loose so they don’t etch into the dough. When you remove
your “board” of dough from the freezer, gently loosen/peel the sheet that will
be the underside of the dough before placing the dough back on it. This bit of
air ensures that your cookies, once cut, will come right off with no “peeling”
needed. (Although even if peeling is needed, it too is a cinch with cold dough
on parchment.)
Taken word-for-word from the wonderful Smitten Kitchen blog
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