Fancy Flours: Where Bakers Bloom

Just pour your royal icing into a squeeze bottle. An 8 oz. bottle holds enough icing for a dozen cookies. It comes with a plastic #2 tip, but you can change it to put on any size tip you prefer.?? HINT: Sometimes getting the icing into the bottles can be a challenge. You can make life easier by mixing your icing in a Pyrex measuring cup with a spout. Simply pour the icing into the bottle. You can quickly ice a dozen cookies with beautiful precision.

For precise cutouts, chill the dough on the cookie sheet after the shapes have been cut. This will prevent spreading when baking.

Royal icing is beautiful and shiny when first applied to cookies but dries into a matte finish. Add a few drops of edible glycerin to royal icing for a softer, shinier appearance.

Allow cookie sheet to thoroughly cool between batches. A hot cookie sheet will warm the dough too much, which will cause the cookies to flatten and spread. Have a couple of extra cookie sheets on hand and rotate them.

Parchment paper allows for very even baking and easy clean up. Parchment eliminates the need to grease your cookie sheet

Use medium to heavy-gauge shiny metal cookie sheets, rimless or with very narrow rims. Sheets specifically designed for cookies allow heat to circulate evenly. (A pan with high sides will both deflect the heat and make the cookies hard to remove when baked.) Dark sheets cause overbrowning or burning.

Always pre-heat the oven at least 20 minutes before baking.

These products have a higher water content than butter and will turn cookie dough runny and yield a flattened out and overdone end result.

Their size is closely regulated for uniformity; one large egg weighs 2 oz. in the shell and 1.75 oz out of the shell. It is important to note that an egg is a liquid ingredient and substituting extra-large or jumbo eggs will throw off the balance of the recipe.

Don’t economize on the baking chocolate, spices, or extracts. Believe it or not, there is a dramatic difference between the flavor of genuine cinnamon and that of cassia, often sold as a cinnamon substitute. Always buy pure vanilla, almond, or other extracts, not imitation flavors which can taste tinny and artificial.