One of my first memories of Christmas baking is watching my mother cut shapes out of sugar cookie dough and then balling up the scraps to roll out again. Repeat this process and the remains will become smaller and firmer. I didn’t have much patience for it as a kid, and now that I’m baking with mine own Kids, we do things a little differently. We consider the leftovers to be cookies in their own right and bake them as is.
I call the resulting cookies “scrappies.” They are irregularly shaped and feature the outlines of gingerbread arms and snowman hats. I don’t crumple them up and unroll them; I simply cut out the shapes I want (or have the kids do this step) and place everything on a baking sheet. The beautiful cookies arrive on a tray, are carefully decorated and lovingly cared for until they are ready to be served or given as a gift; and the scrappies go to the other side, where they are slathered in icing and devoured willy-nilly.
Photo credit: Beth Swarecki
The Scrappies solve a handful of smaller problems at the same time. First, it’s a hassle to roll the leftovers back up into an ever-smaller canvas for cookies. This could take forever Zeno’s paradox Style. If the kids have fun cutting them out, that’s great, but usually everyone is impatient to start decorating and eating.
Second, there’s the fact that re-rolling doesn’t make very good cookies. Allie Chanthorn Reinmann, our food editor, told me, “Re-rolling cookie dough more than once can overload the mixture, leading to more gluten development.” A stronger gluten network causes the cookies to become firmer and Don’t rise as much.” From a flavor and texture standpoint, it’s better to bake the leftovers as is.
And then we get to the more serious questions, like how quickly the kids and I can eat the cookies we bake. Are you just looking forward to a perfect gingerbread man? “Accidentally” broke off his head? Do you wait until you see someone secretly eating a bite and then explain that the fairness is that you get a cookie too? Or are you arguing that you are failing in your duty of care as a chef if you don’t taste your creations early and often?
Don’t worry if you have scrappies. The “good” cookies and scrappies come out of the oven at the same time. You can break a scrappie to test whether it is cooked. You can try one of them to judge the taste and crunchiness. And the best thing: you get free snack materials and a test canvas for decoration. The two year old wants to put icing on something? She can squeeze it onto a scrappie. I’ll do the same and apply a squiggle of the excess onto a cookie that looks like a squiggle itself.
