Best Products For Baking Cookies
10 Essential Tools For Baking Cookies, Plus 8 That Are Really Nice to Have
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While many a cooking project can be done with naught but a sharp knife, a cutting board, and a couple pots and pans, baking is another matter altogether. Arm yourself with the best tools for the job, and it becomes easy and enjoyable, rather than an exercise in frustration. Keep reading for 10 cookie-baking essentials, plus eight next-level tools that are really nice to have. (Santa, are you listening?)
Essential: Half Sheet Pans
Chances are you've seen rimless, insulated baking pans marketed as cookie sheets. Steer clear of these as they're a unitasker and no better at the job than a classic half sheet pan ($18). Be sure to buy light-colored aluminum (not nonstick) half sheet pans, as the darker color of nonstick pans will accelerate browning and even burn your cookies.
Essential: Scale
If you like to bake and have yet to invest in a kitchen scale ($50), it's time. Not only does measuring by weight rather than volume dramatically improve accuracy, but it also makes cleanup much easier, as you won't have dirtied any measuring cups.
Essential: Parchment Sheets
We don't know about you, but we're so over wrestling with a tube of parchment and scissors; parchment sheets ($6 for 22) are precut to half-sheet-pan size, making prepping pans a breeze.
Essential: Colored Sanding Sugar
This six-pack of colorful sanding sugars ($35) will see you through many afternoons spent decorating cutout sugar cookies.
Essential: OXO On Hand Mixer
Creaming together butter and sugar is an essential step in many cookie recipes, as it both incorporates air into the finished product and creates homogenous dough. To do this properly, you'll need a mixer of some sort. If you have a small kitchen (or only bake occasionally), OXO's hand mixer ($80) is a better option than a stand mixer, since it takes up much less space and is a fraction of the price.
Essential: Rolling Pin
Sure, you can hack rolling out gingerbread or sugar cookie dough with an empty wine bottle, but a solid, well-made rolling pin ($40) makes things so much easier. And, provided you handwash it, it should last a lifetime.
Essential: Cookie Scoops
Spring-loaded cookie scoops ($14) make portioning out drop cookies a breeze and ensure that they'll all be the same size (and bake in the same amount of time).
Essential: Cookie Cutters
Fun to collect, cookie cutters (prices vary) make baking sugar and gingerbread cookies so much fun.
Essential: Cooling Racks
These cooling racks ($25) fit neatly inside half sheet pans, making for easy storage when they're not in use cooling cookies. We also like to nestle one in a pan when decorating cookies with sprinkles or powdered sugar to minimize cleanup.
Essential: Oven Thermometer
It's a pretty safe assumption that your oven, unless recently calibrated (and sometimes, even then), runs hotter or colder than the temperature it's set to. An oven thermometer ($7) takes the guesswork (and burnt cookies) out of the equation.
Nice to Have: Stand Mixer
If you only bake cookies occasionally, a hand mixer does the trick, but if you're an avid baker, a KitchenAid stand mixer ($350) is the gold standard.
Nice to Have: Silpat
A Silpat ($27 for half-sheet-pan size) is a great item to have in your arsenal, particularly for baking delicate cookies as it insulates the bottoms of the cookies, reducing browning.
Nice to Have: Disposable Pastry Bags
Disposable pastry bags ($7) aren't as environmentally friendly as a reusable bag, but let's be real, cleaning out a resuable bag is a major pain. Don't have any pastry bags on hand? Fill a large, resealable plastic bag with icing and then snip off one corner for a makeshift pastry bag.
Nice to Have: Holiday Sprinkles Kit
If you're the sort of person who finds joy in meticulously decking out cutout Christmas tree cookies with sprinkle ornaments and reindeers with red noses, this Williams-Sonoma Holiday Deco Kit ($20) will make you a very happy baker.
Nice to Have: Offset Spatula
If you don't have a small offset spatula ($13), the tip of a toothpick works pretty well to spread royal icing over a cookie's surface. But if you plan to bake a bunch of iced cookies, it's a handy item to have.
Nice to Have: #3 Piping Tip
Decorating iced cookies without first piping a border of icing around the edge of the cookie can be messy work; a #3 piping tip ($2) is just the right size for the job.
Nice to Have: Cookie Spatula
A cookie spatula ($8) sounds totally frivolous, but its flexible, near-paper-thin silicone edge slides under delicate cookies with ease.
Nice to Have: Gel Food Coloring
We're not sure why supermarkets typically only sell liquid food coloring, as it is nowhere near as pigmented as gel food coloring ($25 for eight colors). It's nearly impossible to tint royal icing a saturated hue without this concentrated product.
