How to Freeze Cookies and Cookie Dough for Easy Holiday Baking (2024)

FAQs

How to Freeze Cookies and Cookie Dough for Easy Holiday Baking? ›

Drop Cookies: Shape the cookie dough into balls as you would when preparing to bake them. Place them on a silicone- or parchment-lined sheet. Freeze for an hour (or until solid) and transfer to a freezer zip-top bag. Squeeze out the air and freeze.

Cookie dough freezes well for up to 3 months, so it's a great way to get ahead for the holidays or other busy times. For drop cookies, you don't need to wait for the dough to thaw—bake from frozen.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

In most cases, I prefer to freeze cookie dough over freezing baked cookies. That way, you still get the nice homemade smell and softness of the cookies when they come out of the oven. But if you want to get the whole job done, you can certainly bake the cookies, then freeze them later.

Wrap each ball of cookie dough in a small piece of plastic wrap (I like to cut out my strips of plastic wrap in advance and lay them out over the counter to streamline the process) and then place in a single layer in an airtight container or airtight Ziploc bag. Transfer to the freezer and freeze for up to 6 months.

Decorate Later

If possible, bake the cookies, freeze them, then decorate them after they have been thawed. When you're ready to decorate your thawed cookies, make it a festive family activity with our guide to decorating Christmas cookies with kids.

Place baked cookies in sealable plastic containers designed for the freezer. Freeze cookies for up to one year. Don't use themed tins (say, for Christmas cookies). Transfer cookies to such containers once you've removed them from the freezer.

This gives the cookie time to spread without the edges burning before the middle is done. For example, if the recipe instructs you to bake at 350°f / 180°c, I would bake the frozen cookie dough at 330°f / 165°c.

There's no need to thaw frozen drop cookie dough in order to bake your cookies — in fact, we don't recommend it. Start by preheating the oven slightly lower than the temperature called for in your recipe — about 15 degrees F lower.

Freezing cookie dough gives the butter in the dough the chance to become firmer. Colder butter disperses through the cookie more slowly causing a more structured and complex cookie. Cold butter also causes the cookie to spread less creating a final product that is softer and meltier.

How to thaw frozen cookie dough? ›

The best way to thaw frozen dough is by letting it sit in the refrigerator for one or two hours. This gradual defrosting will work better than trying to thaw dough in a warmer room temperature environment such as the kitchen countertop.

As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes).

Think of macarons, pizzelles, madeleine, Florentine, and fortune cookie dough. These don't hold up well in the freezer, and even if you thaw them, they won't bake as well. These cookies usually require a fresh cookie dough batter to be baked successfully.

Drop cookies, like chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin, are the easiest to freeze. To do so, place portioned dough in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and freeze until firm, then you can transfer the dough to zipper-lock bags, says Schreiber.

Line a baking sheet (whichever size will fit in your freezer) with parchment paper. Place the dough balls in a single layer on the baking sheet. Freeze. Transfer the entire baking sheet to the freezer and freeze for 3-4 hours, or until the dough balls are frozen.

Most cookie dough freezes well, particularly these kinds: Chocolate Chip Cookie dough is the cookie dough that I most often have in my freezer - I always have some of my perfect chocolate chip cookie dough, along with my small batch cookie dough or my brown butter chocolate chip cookie dough. They all freeze well.

Generally, it's okay to bake these types of cookies directly from the freezer, but they will not turn out exactly like those that are baked fresh. The taste will remain, but the cookies will not spread as large. If you want the spread to be the same, we recommend thawing the dough for 24 hours in the fridge.

If you've ever been puzzled by a chocolate chip cookie recipe that calls for chilling your dough for an hour, don't skip it. As little as 30 minutes in your fridge or freezer can help your cookie brown better, spread less, and develop a richer chewy texture.