April 13, 2015 - 7:29pm
Making lots and lots of cookies
My daughter loves it when I make animal crackers. (really just lemon-vanilla-oatmeal cookies) I make a lot when I make them, since they go fast, her friends love them too, and animal crackers seem like something you should have in bulk.
However, it's a real pain in the rear to cut out the individual cookies, especially in animal shapes. I thought about trying to find some sort of roller, like ones for springerle or croissant triangles. Most of the ones out there are either very expensive, or sorta cheesy.
Does anyone have any tips on how they've done a lot of cookies with relatively little hassle?
Share
... is a project I have in-mind for gingerbread men... But OTT for simple cookies. Just buy a few cutters and get your daughter and her friends to help out!
(Also - these cookies probably freeze well, spend an afternoon making lots & lots and then freeze them in small batches - I do that for mini tartlet cases, it's dull but you get into a rhythm )
-Gordon
I put my bets on water jet cutting for food.
See what toys you have for pressing out play dough and scrub them up good. Extrude the dough and cut off cookies. If too soft to cut, freeze for half an hour or longer as a log and then cut off. Cut them with a knife or cheese cutting wire.
be to make squares cut with a pizza cutter but press the cookie cutter deep enough into the dough to make an impression, sort of takes the fun out of a fully cut animal but does add the interest and challenge of nibbling the edges to make the animal 3-D.
http://www.frankencutters.com/fc/multiple/thumb.html
I haven't learned how to insert a pic on this tablet,yet, so here is a link.
A piece of plastic or wood,a hot glue gun and you have a row of cookie cutters. A cabinet handle would make a nice gripper.
Have fun but no matter how you do it, I strongly advise you do get the kids involved. Otherwise you are like the little red hen, of childbook fame.
My mother had me so sensitized to that story when I was little. All she had to do was say "Have I told you the story..." and I'd get up and go do whatever I was supposed to be doing.
I didn't know things like this existed:
http://www.bakedeco.com/a/martellato-productio-7819.htm#.VS0yc_nF9d8
Don't know how well it works, but I'm willing to eat a lot of misshapen cookies to find out.
I ordered and used that big sheet that I had linked to - it worked well - a few rolls of a rolling pin and all the cookies dropped out. The one defect, I found, is that it's plastic. It's a hard plastic, but the combination of rolling pin and oatmeal shards (in the recipe I was using) scratched up the edges and I don't think it'll last that long compared to how much volume I want to put through it.
Something like this one from Amazon can be found in thrift shops or
Ebay or bought new online. I remember one my father found that was quite marvelous in mixing the shapes so that there were *no* wasted scraps of dough. That's the most efficient one I've ever seen, but I have no idea where he got it.
http://www.kitchenkrafts.com/product/animal-puzzle-cookie-cutter/s
Some of the shapes look a tad bigger than the usual animal crackers, but you can cut 15 animals at a time with a lot less scraps to re-roll.
The excessively precise side of me wants to say "but the overall shape is round so if you use it more than once there's wasted dough!"... but that's not really the point of the thing.