"Polly Esther" > wrote in message
...
>I am a cookie champion. People kill for cookies I've baked. Okay. That's
>a slight exaggeration but I've never had a leftover. However . . . my
>attempts with cookies that should be rolled out and cut? No success. Are
>there some technical tricks or something Moma taught you that I've missed?
>I do have a nice slab of marble and I could put it in the freezer for a
>while if cold surface would help. Maybe I need a better weapon to slide
>the cut cookies to the cookie sheet. I always wind up with what looks like
>ragged pasta. What am I missing? Polly

My mom always made the rolled out cookies. Me? Not so much because they
are a pain but I don't recall having too many problems with them. I did
roll them out on either a pastry cloth if I had one or waxed paper if I
didn't. I have a marble rolling pin that a friend gave me many years ago.
It's very heavy so maybe that's why it worked so well? My mom had a wooden
one that was heavy for a wooden one but it had one handle missing. I never
knew what happened to the handle but I liked to tell people that she hit my
dad over the head with it.

I do know that one thing that you have to do is to chill your dough for at
*least* two hours before rolling out. Better if you can leave the dough
overnight to make sure it is really chilled. And make sure to put your bowl
back in the fridge between rollings to keep the dough cold.

I prefer the really old kind of cutters that they probably don't even make
any more. Metal with a closed top and a knob on them. I just don't really
like the open ones or the ones that are made of plastic. The old style seem
to have a sharper edge to them.

I guess I got lazy in more recent years and when making the rolled cookies,
I just cut them with a knife. It was quicker and I found that people didn't
really seem to care if they were in fancy shapes or not.

But... Since I used to make enough cookies to fill two paper grocery bags
each year, and then some, I preferred to make things that were quicker. I
always made a lot of Spritz because they did look fancy and I could use the
same dough for a variety of things, only varying perhaps the color and
flavor. I did a few kinds of drop cookies and some shaped by hand. I also
used to ship some of the cookies and the rolled ones didn't travel so well.

I once decorated some cookies at a friend's house. I was amazed at her
house for starters. They had one of those old style cabinets in their
kitchen (the name escapes me now) that is freestanding and has a big flour
bin in it. They had a chest freezer and it was full of rolled out sour
cream cookies in a variety of shapes. Some were just for Christmas. Her
mom pulled out lots of the Christmas ones and we set them out on cooling
racks to defrost while we made the frosting. My friend said the freezer was
always full of those cookies. They had them year round and they would
decorate them as needed. I never did get the recipe though.