Holiday cookie guide

How many cookies to bake, how far ahead you can make them, and how to keep them fresh, whether they’re for a party tray, a cookie exchange or a box in the mail.

How many cookies to bake

Most drop-cookie recipes make 3 to 4 dozen, and most cut-out recipes 2 to 3 dozen, depending on size. Check the yield before you shop, and use the recipe scaler to double or triple a batch with amounts you can measure.

Baking a lot at once

• Weigh the flour. When you’re tripling a recipe, a small error per cup adds up. The cups-to-grams chart has flour, sugar and butter by weight.
• Make doughs first, bake later. Most doughs keep 2 to 3 days in the fridge, so you can mix on a weeknight and bake on the weekend.
• Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack for the most even results, or swap and turn the sheets halfway through if you bake two.
• Let sheets cool between batches. Dough on a hot sheet spreads before it bakes.
• Butter math: 1 stick is ½ cup, 8 tablespoons or 113 grams.

Making them ahead

Freeze baked cookies in a single layer until firm, then pack them in a container with parchment between layers. Thaw them at room temperature in the closed container, so condensation forms on the outside, not on the cookies.

Hosting a cookie exchange

Each person bakes one kind of cookie in quantity, and everyone goes home with a mix. The hard part is avoiding six batches of chocolate chip. A cookie exchange sign-up sheet lets each baker claim their cookie from one link, so everyone can see what’s taken. To pick a date most people can make, a quick holiday party date poll settles it before calendars fill up.

Questions