Ready to bake your best batch of holiday cookies? With my essential cookie baking tips, you’ll be whipping up festive treats that look as amazing as they taste!
Nothing signals the start of the winter holiday season like the smell of freshly baked cookies. After creating and testing (and re-testing!) over 60 holiday cookie recipes—plus dozens of other cookie favorites—I’ve learned a thing or two about what separates a perfectly baked cookie from an epic cookie fail.
Whether you’re a fan of candy cane sugar cookies or chewy chocolate chip cookies, these tried-and-true tips (plus a few must-have tools!) will have you baking holiday cookies like a pro!
11 Tips for Perfect Holiday Cookies
1. Measure Your Flour Correctly
It’s no secret that baking is a science, which means accuracy is everything. Too much flour makes cookies dense and can keep them from spreading. When measuring flour, don’t dip the measuring cup into the bag of flour, as it compacts it and causes you to use more flour than the recipe calls for. Instead, stir and spoon the flour into the measuring cup then level it off.
This tip is so important I wrote a separate post on it: Why Accurate Flour Measurement Matters.
2. Don’t Overmix Your Dough
Cookie recipes made with flour can run the risk of being too tough if the dough is overmixed. Stirring the flour activates the gluten, and excessive stirring causes the resulting cookies to be tough in texture and more dense. So turn that KitchenAid Stand Mixer to “low” and watch for the moment when the dry ingredients are just combined into the wet ingredients to create a lighter dough, and thus less dense cookies.
3. Even Out Your Roll
Cutout Christmas sugar cookies are the quintessential holiday cookie. But before you stamp out those snowmen, ensure your dough is evenly rolled out in all areas so your cookies will bake at the same rate and in the same amount of time.
See it in action: Tune in to my video to learn a simple baking trick I use to evenly roll out cookie dough so you’ll have uniform cookies batch after batch!
4. Chill Your Dough
Most cookie dough recipes—whether it’s my fave thumbprint cookies or classic butter cookies—will benefit from being chilled in the refrigerator before being shaped and baked. Refrigerating cookie dough has two benefits:
- Firms up the butter, making the dough easier to work with.
- Lets the flour absorb extra moisture, helping prevent cookies from spreading too much while baking.
No time to chill? No problem! Some of my favorite holiday cookies don’t require any dough chilling, including chewy ginger molasses cookies, shortbread cookies and Christmas monster cookies.
5. Temperature Is Everything
From your oven to your ingredients and even your dough (see tip #4), temperature plays a key role when making cookies.
- Oven temperature: There’s nothing worse than devoting your time to making and shaping cookies, only to discover after it’s too late that your 350°F oven was actually running closer to 400°F. The result? Burned cookies. Make sure to double-check the temperature of your oven using an oven thermometer.
- Butter and egg temperature: Pay attention to your cookie recipe. If it calls for cold ingredients, use cold ingredients. If it calls for room-temperature eggs, butter or other dairy ingredients, take the time to bring them to room temperature. They’ll blend easier with the other ingredients in your recipe, creating a uniform texture. And room temp eggs will add more volume to the dough, making for fluffier, lighter cookies.
Baker’s Tip: Room temperature butter should actually feel cool to the touch, not warm, and when you press it, your finger will make a slight indent. I like to take my butter out of the fridge about 1 hour before I start baking.
6. Space Your Cookies Apart
Let’s talk spacing! It might sound basic, but giving your cookies room to spread is key to picture-perfect results. Of course every type of cookie will spread differently, but I find that keeping them at least 2 inches apart on the baking sheet usually does the trick.
Baker’s Tip: Use a cookie scoop to keep them uniform in size.
7. One Batch at a Time
As tempting as it is to get all your holiday cookies in the oven at once, baking one batch at a time is the way to go for the best results. Why? Baking multiple sheets at once can lead to unevenly baked cookies (think burnt bottoms and raw centers). For a perfectly golden batch every time, bake each sheet on the middle rack by itself. If you’re in a hurry, rotate your pans halfway through for a little extra insurance.
8. Prevent Excess Spreading
No one likes a flat, sad cookie! To keep those festive shapes crisp and those centers chewy, here are a few go-to tricks:
- Chill for clean shapes: If you’re making sugar cookies or cutouts, pop the shaped dough in the fridge before baking. A chilled cutout cookie holds its shape better, so you’ll get nice, sharp edges rather than blobs.
- Choose the right baking sheets: The baking sheets you use matter more than you’d think! Dark sheets can over-bake cookies, while thin, flimsy sheets can burn the bottoms. These Nordic Ware Sheet Pans are my favorite.
- Line your baking sheets: Skip nonstick sprays (they create too slick a surface) and go for parchment paper (I swear by these sheets!) or silicone baking mats instead. Silicone grips the dough, so cookies spread less and brown evenly.
What if your cookies aren’t spreading? This is a surprisingly common question! Here are a few possible reasons and solutions:
- Too much flour: This is the most common culprit behind non-spreading cookies (see tip #1).
- Your dough is too cold: While I’m all for chilling, overly cold dough won’t spread well. Let it sit for a few minutes at room temperature, then bake.
- Not enough fat: Fat (usually butter) helps cookies spread. If you’ve swapped it out or didn’t let the butter soften enough, your cookies may stay thicker. Just make sure you’re using the right amount, and let butter come to room temp if the recipe calls for it (see step #5).
If your cookies didn’t spread, no worries! While they’re still warm, gently press them down with the back of a spoon or spatula to flatten them out a bit—they’ll hold that shape as they cool.
9. Count on Carryover Cooking
To ensure your cookies are perfectly baked, remove them from the oven a few minutes before they reach their desired degree of doneness. Cookies will continue baking on the cookie sheet after they’re taken out of the oven, so it’s important to account for the carryover cooking time.
10. Don’t Place Cookie Dough on a Hot Baking Sheet
Allow baking sheets to cool completely between batches of cookies. As tempting as it is to speed up the baking process, avoid rushing and never place cookie dough on hot cookie sheets. Doing so causes the cookies to spread too much or to become overbaked.
11. Cool Before Decorating
In addition to allowing the baking sheet to cool between batches, it’s just as critical to allow the baked cookies to cool completely before you decorate them. Hot cookies plus buttercream frosting is a recipe for a melted (yet delicious) mess.
Get Baking With My Favorite Holiday Cookies
Ready to put your cookie baking skills to the test? Find inspiration with all of my best holiday cookie recipes:
Craving more? Subscribe to Just a Taste to get new recipes, meal plans and a newsletter delivered straight to your inbox! And stay in touch on Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest and Instagram for all of the latest updates.Preheat your oven, crank up that Christmas music and enjoy the sweet smell of cookies filling your kitchen. Happy baking—and even happier eating!
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