Rolling & Cutting Tips
Vermont Cookie Love baking tips for making a perfect cookie with the cookie rose technique. Scroll down for more tips on working with "It's a Wonderful Love™" sugar cookie dough and how to make Royal Icing.
Get the Look with the Cookie Rose
If you take home some Cookie Love® frozen cookie dough and want to get the textured look of our cookies, try this: Cut or break the dough into any size piece you'd like (if you haven't eaten it raw yet). Take a piece of dough and break it gently in half. Now turn the two pieces 90 degrees so that the rough broken surface of each piece is aiming up, and press the base of each piece together slightly. The goal is to preserve the rough broken surface on top so that it looks like a little cookie dough rose. Then follow the baking instructions on the package. When it bakes down, not only will it maintain a textured "home-made" appearance, but it will also achieve the crunch on the outside and gooey on the inside consistency our customers love. (works for all flavors but ""It's a Wonderful Love™" sugar cookie dough and "Fall in Love™" pumpkin cookie dough.)
1. Slice a disk of dough for a cookie.
2. Break the disk in half so you have 2 pieces.
3. Invert the two pieces 90° so that the rough edges are pointing up.
4. Press the base of the two pieces back together, leaving the rough edges on top. You now have a tall ball of dough with a rough top - a cookie rose - that will bake down into a beautiful cookie.
Working with It’s a Wonderful Love™ frozen sugar cookie dough:
Whether you work with Cookie Love® sugar cookie dough, or you made your own, here are some tips for handling the dough that will help you make perfect cut outs again and again.
If the dough was previously frozen, bring it almost to room temperature before rolling. It should be soft enough that you don't have to strain to roll it.
Once the dough is soft, tear two large sheets of wax paper and place the dough between the sheets. Try to position the dough so that its shape more or less conforms to the shape of the paper. In other words, if you have a log of dough to start, place it length-wise on the paper, rather than width-wise. If you have a ball of dough, just center it.
Starting in the center of the dough, press your rolling pin down into the dough first, then firmly roll out to the edge of the dough. Don't start at the edge and roll back and forth on the dough because you will end up with a curled piece of dough, and the paper is more apt to tear.
Turn the whole package of paper and dough a quarter turn and repeat, rolling until your dough is pretty uniformly rolled out to a thickness of about ¼ inch.
Place the dough-in-paper package on a cookie sheet, and put the cookie sheet and all into the freezer. It will only take about 10 minutes for it to freeze up enough to be able to cut out nice clean shapes.
While it is freezing, select your cookie cutters, and place a mixture of flour and sugar about 1/2 inch deep into a shallow dish (the proportions don't really matter), wide enough for you to be able to dip your largest cutter into.
If your dough is stiff when you try to pick it up, it is ready to cut. Take the whole thing out of the freezer, leaving the dough-in-paper on the cookie sheet, which will help keep it cold longer.
Peel the waxed paper slowly and gently off the top of the dough. It will pull away easiest if you pull so the paper forms about a 45 degree angle over the paper that remains, and pull in a slight circular direction. Once the whole sheet is off, place it gently back on top of the dough, and flip the whole dough-in-package over so you can peel the other sheet off the other side. Once both sheets of paper are free of the dough, you can take the sheet off of what is now the top and begin cutting.
Dip your cutter in the flour/sugar mix and press it firmly into the dough. When you lift it up, the dough will probably come with it. If so, gently push the dough out of the cutter onto a separate cookie sheet.
Cut out as many shapes as you can and place them about an inch apart on the other cookie sheet.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10-12 minutes. Watch the cookies (preferably through the window in your oven rather than by opening the door). Your cookies are done when the edges just start to brown.
Roll the rest of the scraps of dough into a ball and repeat the pressing, rolling, freezing, cutting and baking procedure. If your wax paper gets too thin and delicate, replace it with new wax paper.
Allow your cookies to cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheet, and then transfer them to a rack or paper towel to cool the rest of the way before decorating.
Baked cookies can be frozen in an air tight freezer bag if you make them ahead of time. Just wait until they are thoroughly cooled before putting them in the bag.
QUICK AND EASY ROYAL ICING:
Ingredients
2 egg whites (at room temperature)
3 cups confectioner’s sugar (sifted before measured)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Pinch salt
Food coloring*
Instructions
Combine egg whites, sugar and salt in a bowl (use a stand mixer with the whisk attachment if you have one).
Mix at medium high speed for about 5 minutes, adding drops of lemon juice as you go, until the mixture approximately doubles in volume, forms peaks, and is somewhat shiny in appearance.
Divide into portions if you plan to add food coloring.
* For extra vivid colors, use gel food coloring instead of liquid.