Freezing Sugar Cookies

Sometimes I have dough left after I cut and bake the sugar cookies I need, and I question how best to use it up. Until now, I’ve always just continued cutting cookies to have as ‘extras’ but I’ve often wondered if I could freeze the dough or cookies to use later as a way to be less wasteful and more efficient for my next project. However, I love the idea of freshly baked cookies, so I always continue to bake and decorate my sugar cookies as close to the event/holiday date as possible because I am worried about compromising taste and/or texture by freezing. But, a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to stop wondering if it was possible and to start figuring out if freezing was an option!

I did already have some cookies in the freezer, but I hadn’t put either set in there with the plan on decorating and eating them. The first set I had frozen last spring after reading Bake at 350’s motivating post, which made me feel confident that freezing decorated cookies could be completely successful. I put them in there as an experiment to see what they’d look like when I took them out. And then I forgot about them. For about 10 months! But after my decision to experiment with the taste and texture of frozen dough & cookies, I remembered these ones! I took them out and followed the instructions to let them come to room temperature while still completely sealed. When I opened the bag and took the layers of cookies out, I was pleasantly surprised that the cookies still looked as they did when I put them in the freezer all those months ago! The colors weren’t muted and there were no dark spots (I even left them out for a few days to watch what happened to them), as is discussed in some of the comments of this post of Sweetopia’s. Below is a picture of the cookies after a few days out of the freezer (please note that these were ‘duds’ that I froze, so the imperfections in the icing and decorating were the reason they were relegated to the freezer experiment in the first place, and the time in the freezer is not at fault!). Although this little experiment was successful in terms of design, the little corner I tasted wasn’t very appealing after 10 months in the freezer! I think I need to repeat this experiment and to remember to take the cookies out within 3 months instead of 10!

I did use the second set of cookies from the freezer as part of my taste and texture test, however. It was some leftover teapot cookies from Sophia’s 6th birthday in early November that I had stored in the freezer with the plan to try out some different decorating ideas (but I obviously had yet to do so!), so I decided to use those and to freeze some dough as a comparison. When the time came, I also baked up some fresh cookies with fresh dough as a 3rd cookie to add to the taste and texture test.

I sent Roy to work with three stacks of cookies with the instructions (and also dropped some for Lindsey and Charlie with the same requests) to have each person taste one of each shape of cookie and note the differences, if any, in taste and texture between them. I left the cookies undecorated so that they could really focus just on the cookie itself, but I also wanted to know how they thought each would taste if they were iced.

The butterflies were baked from dough made the same day, the music notes were baked from dough that had been frozen for 2 weeks, and the teapots were baked and frozen 4 months prior.

I was very thankful for the feedback from everyone, and had a good laugh at the thorough notes that Roy brought home from his crew! Roy chose the butterflies as his favorite (this didn’t surprise me and I completely expected it – he seems to have a much more sensitive palate for frozen items than anyone I know!), and others thought the music notes were the most flavorful. I wasn’t surprised that the butterflies were reported as the softest and the teapots as driest. I surprised them all when I revealed that they were eating cookies made from the exact same recipe because they assumed I had been testing out different recipes. I wonder if they would have had the same feedback if they were just focused on taste and texture without trying to find the hidden ingredients and/or recipe discrepancies (I had questions about vanilla usage and the possibility of white chocolate!)?!

I am still going to continue to make my dough fresh because I love making things that way and have had overwhelming positive feedback about the cookies as I’ve been doing them, but I am now confident that I can freeze dough for a couple of weeks when I have leftovers. It’s great to know that the dough may hold up better than baked cookies in the freezer, although the duration of freezing could have a large impact on that, I assume. I would definitely like to do more experimenting! And I’d definitely want to have decorated cookies taste tested, as well.

These are the scenarios I am thinking of for the next round(s) of my taste and texture test:

• dough frozen in a ball vs. dough rolled, cut, and frozen to be baked 2 or 3 weeks later
• cookies baked and frozen for 2 weeks vs. cookies baked and frozen for 3 months
• cookies baked from fresh dough vs. cookies baked from frozen dough vs. cookies frozen for 2 weeks vs. cookies frozen for 3 months
• cookies baked from fresh dough vs. cookies baked from frozen dough vs. frozen cookies that have all been decorated with royal icing
• decorated sugar cookies that have been frozen for 2 weeks vs. 3 months

And I am sure I can come up with other possibilities to try out as well. If any of you have any ideas for me, please let me know!

Note that I only had enough with my frozen & fresh portions for 8 taste testers this time around, but don’t worry all my favorite cookie-eating friends out there who I didn’t force to try these ones out! As you can see, I will be working on this more in the next little while and I’ll definitely be asking for your help!