Baking Tip - Try Slice and Bake Cookies

When you hear the term “slice and bake cookies”, you probably think of the hermetically sealed rolls of dough that you find in the refrigerator section of the grocery store.  Not the most appetizing image. But, actually, slice and bake is a great thing when it comes to cookies.  Slice and bake cookies are easy to make, can be dolled up to be quite fancy, can be made in any batch size, and the dough can be made ahead and baked as needed. All good things in my book. These sorts of cookies are my go-to if I want to make cookies for book club mid-week. I just make the dough on the weekend and bake the cookies the night before. I get beautiful cookies, practically on-demand with very little work.

So what do you need to make them? First, start off with a good recipe. I am partial to Dorie Greenspan’s sables. They are a little shortbread cookie that takes really well to customizing for various seasons or holidays. Once you make your dough you can store it in the fridge for up to a week. Any longer than that and you should freeze it.

You will want to roll your cookie log in colored sugar prior to baking.  Which brings me to the second thing, you need sugar in fun colors. I buy my sugar at Nancy’s Fancy’s in Santa Rosa.  You can go online too – check out Fancy Flours, they sell 22 colors of decorating sugar! At Christmas I use red and green sugar. I used neon yellow, orange and pink for cookies for a BBQ last summer. The possibilities are endless and you will find that you can easily make very pretty, impressive looking cookies.

Have you ever made slice and bake cookies?