Ready to upgrade your cookie baking? We’ve got your pro tips

FRESHNESS COUNTS

If you don’t bake often, your baking soda and baking powder may be past their prime. And that means your cookies won’t have the right puff. If you can’t recall when you bought them, splurge on new ones. Or test them by combining a little with vinegar. If the mixture gets foamy, you’re good to go.

PAY ATTENTION TO TEMPERATURE

Temperature can play a variety of roles in a recipe (beyond just setting your oven correctly). Butter simply cannot cream correctly if it’s too cold or too warm. So if a recipe calls for softened butter, you want it to hold its shape, but yield when pressed on. And proper creaming of the butter and sugar is critical to the finished texture of your cookies.

SCRAPE THE BOWL

You know the part of the recipe that says to scrape your bowl between additions? Do it. It’s important. If you don’t scrape the bowl, it’s likely that your dough won’t be properly mixed. You might end up with a chunk of unmixed butter or sugar, or a smear of egg white, in your dough. Or even worse, you could get a hunk of creamed butter and sugar that hasn’t been mixed into the flour, resulting in a big streak of crispy and unsightly burnt edge.

PORTION THE DOUGH EVENLY

For drop cookies, your best bet is to use a disher, also known as a cookie scoop. These look like an ice cream scoop, but have a thumb- or other squeeze-activated bar inside the scoop to help dislodge the dough. They are the best way to get your drop cookies evenly sized. You can find them online and at most kitchen shops. (And in the off season, use them for ice cream.)

For slice-and-bake refrigerator cookies, the key is to turn your dough log a quarter turn after every slice. This keeps the log from losing its shape, and that keeps the cookies round.

WET YOUR HANDS

When you’re working with a soft or sticky dough, it can be difficult to move it from the bowl to the counter or pan. But if you moisten your hands lightly with a bit of water, the dough won’t stick as much. This works especially well for spreading bars or brownies in a pan, but also if you’re trying to wrap rounds of dough to go in the refrigerator.

Most drop cookies should be slightly flattened once the dough balls are arranged on the baking sheet. This helps the cookies bake evenly so the centers aren’t still doughy when the edges are done. Pressing each ball gently with the underside of a drinking glass or a moistened palm is a good way to do this.

EMBRACE KITCHEN PARCHMENT

Kitchen parchment (also called baking parchment or parchment paper) is paper treated to be nonstick and heat-safe. It works wonders preventing your cookies from sticking to the pan, and also makes your cleanup much easier. You can find it alongside the foil at the grocer and it comes as sheets or rolls.

DON’T FLOUR YOUR CUT-OUT COOKIES

When you’re going to roll out dough for cut-out cookies, you often turn out the dough onto a floured surface, then sprinkle it with more flour as you roll it flat. Stop it.

COOL YOUR PANS

If you’re baking more than one pan of cookies, make sure to let your pans cool between batches. Remember how that dough needs to be the right temperature before it goes in the oven? If you put it on a hot pan, the bottoms of the dough will get all melty and the cookies will spread too much during baking.

FREEZE EXTRA DOUGH

Maybe you don’t want a huge pile of cookies lying around the house (because you might eat them all at once). Or maybe you want to prep your cookie supply so you can bake off a few at a time later. The solution is the freezer. Most cookie doughs freeze beautifully. Slice and bake cookies should be frozen, well wrapped, as a whole log. Just bring back to refrigerator temperature before slicing.

FREEZE EXTRA COOKIES

While freshly baked cookies definitely are better, if you bake too many cookies the freezer still can be your friend. Make sure you freeze your cookies before decorating them. The best option is in an airtight container to help prevent breaking. And separate layers of cookies with sheets of kitchen parchment or waxed paper to prevent them from sticking together. Unfrosted bars can be frozen right in the pan. Cookies with a very high sugar content (such as Florentines or other lace cookies) don’t do well in the freezer. You’ll just need to eat those.