From the wondeful folks at King Arthur Flour
Place the following in a mixing bowl, and beat until combined:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice or ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon salt
Add 1 large egg, and 2 tablespoons molasses.
Beat until smooth. Amazing how that one egg smooths things out, eh?
Add 1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour. Mix until thoroughly combined, then add an additional 1 1/2 cups flour, for a total of 3 cups. Add 3 tablespoons cornstarch, along with the second batch of flour.
Mix to combine.
See how dry this looks? Scrape the bowl, and continue to mix……until everything looks well mixed, with no dry spots.
Divide the dough in half, flattening each half slightly to make a disk. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour, or overnight. This chilling period will make the dough easier to handle.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Take one piece of dough out of the refrigerator, and place it on a piece of half-sheet parchment (16 1/2” x 12 1/4”).
If you don’t have parchment, place the dough on a lightly floured work surface.
Roll it 1/8” to 1/4” thick. A thinner cookie will be crisper; a thicker cookie, more solid/soft (though not bendy soft; just softer than crisp).
Draw a mental line down the center of the sheet; or actually cut your dough in half, using a knife or pizza cutter. Your goal is to cut cookies that will fall on one or the other half of the paper; you’ll see why in a minute.
Cut out cookies, removing and saving the dough between them. You’ll re-roll and cut these scraps.
As the dough gets warmer, it gets trickier to remove the crooked, awkward pieces of dough in between cutouts; a toothpick helps.
Now, take a pair of scissors and cut that sheet of parchment right down the middle.
If you like, you can start with a half-sheet of parchment, rather than rolling on a full sheet and then cutting; you’ll just need to use a smaller piece of dough.
As you continue to roll out dough and cut cookies, lay the sheets of cookies into a 9” x 13” pan. Continue until you’ve used all the dough.
If you prefer rolling cookies on a floured surface, you can pick them up and transfer them to the parchment in the pan. If you don’t have parchment, substitute waxed paper or foil.
Why roll directly on the parchment? It’s great for sticky dough, and/or intricate shapes. It’s easier to pick up a piece of parchment with cutout cookies than it is to successfully move delicate cookies from your rolling surface to a pan.
Next, cover the pan with plastic wrap (or a shower cap), and place it in the freezer. Once the cookies are frozen, you can leave the pan in the freezer; or, to save space (and get your pan back), remove the pan from the freezer, quickly peel the cookies off the parchment, and store them in a zip-top bag.
I say quickly because you don’t want cookies defrosting and getting soft; they’ll stick together in the bag.
Ready to bake?
Remove the cookies from the freezer. If you’ve kept them on the parchment, simply transfer cookies, parchment and all, to a baking sheet.
If the frozen cookies have been bagged, take the bag out of the freezer, and quickly place the frozen cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Do you see the word “parchment” being used constantly here? It’s the test kitchen’s best friend – and it should be yours, too. There’s nothing like parchment for keeping pans clean, moving stuff around, storage, preventing sticking, and a host of other uses.
A single piece of parchment can be used over and over again, too. What’s not to like?!
Bake the cookies just until they’re slightly brown around the edges, or until they feel firm, about 10 to 13 minutes.
Remove them from the oven...edges are just slightly brown.
When the cookies are completely cool, you can choose to decorate them – or not.
Keep the cookies on the parchment–it works to keep the layers separate when you freeze hundreds of cookies/piecrusts/etc. You can stack them as high as you need to, and then freeze the plastic tub.
If you are freezing any rolled dough, remember–get PARCHMENT. Look carefully in the foil/wrap section as many grocery stores carry it.
Freezing dough on waxed paper will turn it to wet mush that can’t be peeled off. Wastes everything including your time.
