LCBO Food & Drink Holiday 2024

SMART COOKIES

Extra, Extra, Extras! No matter what holiday you celebrate or your skill level in the kitchen, here are more tips, tricks and advice to make better cookies this festive season.

BAKER’S ARSENAL

BEYOND CHRISTMAS Decorative cookies can easily be tailored to fit whatever holiday you celebrate. For Hanukkah, use six-pointed star cutters or pipe white Stars of David on round cookies flooded with blue. For Diwali (next year), use bright colours and ornate piping. And for Kwanzaa, use the traditional colours of red, black and green.

Three essential tools for baking better cookies.

DOWEL ROLLING PIN This rolling pin gives better control, as you can put pressure on either side to level out uneven spots. It yields a smooth finish every time.

SMALL OFFSET SPATULA

A pastry chef’s best friend, this spatula keeps the edges of raw, cut-out cookies crisp when transferring them onto baking sheets.

DYE JOB

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

For decorating your cookies, a 10-inch (25-cm) piping bag provides more than enough room for manageable portions of icing. To create intricate details and outlines, choose a fine round tip (Wilton #1, #2 or #3). Star tips (Wilton #16 and #32) and a ruffle tip (Wilton #103) will add texture, and a small round tip (Wilton #10) makes beads that can stand tall or be swooshed.

ALUMINUM HALF-SHEET PAN Thanks to their light colour and ability to evenly conduct heat, these pans minimize overbaked cookies. They also last a lifetime.

Gel food colourings are the way to go as they deliver vibrant colours without extra water, which can throw off the icing texture you’ve worked carefully to achieve. When flooding cookies, colour portions of stiff icing for outlines. When finished, thin out the same portion to flood the cookies. This makes for a perfect colour match every time!

SURFACE FOR COOKIE IMAGE: ISTOCK.COM/MARUMARU

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———————— HOLIDAY 2024