Make them simple for easy success

December 11, 2017 Last Updated: December 18, 2017 02:15 PM Community

Butler Vo-Tech culinary arts student Ryan Ortz, left, spreads glaze on a cookie, while Kayla Martinez adds sprinkles to another. The school's annual cookie sale begins today.

BUTLER TWP — Visions of decorated cookies cut in fancy shapes dance in the heads of would-be cookie bakers at this time of year.

However, it's tricky to make attractive Christmas cookies. Common pitfalls include varying thicknesses, dark bottoms, gooey icing, decorations falling off and squiggly piped icing.

Just before Christmas, students in the culinary program at Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School and Katie Collins, their baking and pastry arts instructor, make and sell about 865 dozen cookies.

Collins and her students offered tips for making better home-baked confections.

When rolling out dough, Collins said using a rolling pin with measuring guides will keep the thickness of each cookie the same.

Alternatively, she said to compare the rolled dough to a cookie cutter that is the desired thickness, often 1/8 or 1/4 inch.

Baking the cookies brings on more challenges. Collins said cookies will spread too much on greased cookie sheets and pan sprays burn onto trays making the bottoms of the cookies very dark.She said a better way to keep cookies from sticking and burning is to cover the tray with parchment paper. She stressed this is not the same as wax paper. Parchment paper does not have a waxy coating.After baking, Collins said cookies must completely cool before glazing or icing because the confectioners' sugar in the glaze will become too liquid. The icing will not stay on the cookie.Ryan Ortz, a junior from Knoch High School, said ingredients for a basic glaze or icing are confectioners' sugar, warm water and vanilla. He said to mix the ingredients with a stand mixer or a whisk until the glaze makes a smooth ribbonlike stream as the whisk is lifted.Collins said when the mixture is ready, it also forms a slight skin on the top in less than a minute. She said that's a sign the glaze will dry well on the cookie within about one hour.She said to stir that skin back into the glaze before glazing the cookies.A simple cookie glaze is easier to tint than other decorative icings, she said, and the texture stays the same between the time of icing the first and last cookies of a batch.Kayla Martinez, a junior from Knoch High School, said dipping cookies into thinner glazes works, but thicker glazes are applied using a thin metal icing spreader.

“We take the icing spreader straight up and down and just drag it very flat across the cookie and along the very bottom,” Collins said.She said use the bottom of the spreader to smooth out lines without scraping the cookie.Martinez said to avoid drips on the cookie edges, remove excess glaze.“It just makes it look more professional,” she said.Collins uses just enough white icing to make the decorations stick to the cookie.“Color can separate from icing. White is the natural color and therefore always consistent,” she said.For quick decorating, Collins suggested colored sprinkles, mini-button- shaped candies, edible pearls and sanding sugar.“Sanding sugar is a large, coarse sugar product that is colored with dyes, and it comes in all colors,” Collins said. “You can get very, very coarse and you can get finer sugar.”She said one way to use sanding sugar is to roll a scooped or spooned ball of dough in it before baking.“(Cookies) come out already decorated and they always look really nice,” Collins said.Rolling cookies in sanding sugar before baking, topping flavorful cookies with a simple glaze and dipping cookies in chocolate are some of the ways the students decorate.They typically sprinkle decorations on by hand because shakers can clog. Then the toppings drop unevenly on the cookies.“It's simple but it looks really nice when it's all put together,” Martinez said.“There are lots of ways to decorate cookies. You just have to get creative and think outside the box,” Collins said.She does not recommend freezing baked cookies, especially iced cookies. “The cookies will be dry and fall apart. The quality won't be very high.”She said, “The icing parts begin to separate and when you pull it out of the freezer and they begin to thaw, the cookies are going to stick together because the icing gets almost wet again from the condensation from the freezer.”She said it's better to make the cookies only one to two days before giving them as gifts.

The students said there is another way to decrease the effort just before gifting. Shape the cookie dough in advance. For example, they cut out cookies in shapes and carefully move each unbaked cookie to a parchment covered baking sheet. They can cover a layer of cookies with more parchment and add another layer of unbaked cookies.After wrapping or covering the loaded sheet, they move it to the freezer where it can hold for six months.Collins said this method works for most cookies. When it's time to bake, the still-frozen cookies can go into the oven without thawing.“They will be very fresh when baked,” Collins said.She remembers times spent making cookies with her grandmother.“More or less for the home cook, it's about the memories behind them,” Collins said.The annual Vo-Tech cookie sale starts today and runs through Dec. 22. Pick-up hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Check in at the office at 210 Campus Lane. To order, call 724-282-0735, Ext. 255. For more information, visit the restaurant/bakery section of the school website, https://www.butlertec.us/. Proceeds from the sale return to the culinary arts program.