**Disclaimer: I was provided two complimentary sets of The Cookie Thing for the purpose of this review, but the opinions and photos are my own.**
First, if you can’t have a cupcake, have a cookie. You can have fun decorating them, you can make them unique for each taste and preference, and with will power, you can exercise portion control by not eating a whole bunch. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it!
In our house, we bake a lot of cookies. A lot. While I still prefer cupcakes, there’s a special place in my heart for a warm chocolate chip cookie, soft and chewy (not a crispy cookie fan) or a melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookie with the most perfect of frostings. We love a good dessert, but we also are non-GMO, organic-as-possible, non-HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) and ‘know your ingredients, pronounce your ingredients and keep the list short’ in every way that we possibly can, so that means we have to know how to do it ourselves as bakeries with those standards aren’t in every neighborhood. With Thanksgiving coming up quickly, we are getting a jumpstart on the baked goods we’re putting out and starting the desserts first. We also wanted to have some munchies around for the next few days as the kids are out of school and that means extra young mouths to fill without expanding their waist line or killing their immune systems and energy levels. (My kinda holiday, love having an excuse to feed people.)
To that end, the request for the week was sugar cookies. “In Thanksgiving shapes, Mom.”
Noted.
To make things easier, I pulled out my latest kitchen gadget, aptly named The Cookie Thing. The Cookie Thing’s goal is to help you roll out dough in uniform sizes. No more skinny cookies that burn or fat cookies that melt and grow so big as to obscure the shapes. It also works for pie dough or anything else you need to roll out.
The Cookie Thing is the brainchild of Susan Butler as a way to avoid the disappointment that came about when picturing a certain result in mind – beautifully decorated cookies – yet ending up with a mess of dough stuck to a rolling pin, the counter, the table and cookies that didn’t resemble the picture at all. (Keep reading, I offer a significant coupon code for The Cookie Thing!)
The Cookie Thing is made out of solid maple, and the measuring boards – the guides that determine the thickness of the dough – come in four sizes: 1/8”, ¼”, 3/8” and ½”. Use wax paper under and on top of the dough/guides, and you avoid the sticking without having to add a ton of flour that toughens up the dough or discolors it. (Nothing stinks more when making gingerbread men out of a gorgeous, richly colored dough and having it dulled by white spots from the flour.)
I love the little ribbons!
This is to give you an idea of the size — everyone has a highlighter for comparison, right? (Can you believe I had no coins handy to use?? It was either the pink highlighter or an In ‘n Out ketchup packet.)
Each year, we have a gingerbread man party, where all the kids and their significant others come to decorate cookies that I’ve made the day before. (It’s an event, with every type of decoration imaginable. More on that later.) We also make our own gingerbread house, and this year, a tree as well, so having evenly rolled out dough is paramount to success. I’m so glad I have The Cookie Thing!
To make our cookies, I used the recipe included, which I’ll share with their permission below. It’s easy and has a wonderfully buttery and lightly sweet flavor.
Cookie Dough
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tsp soda
- 2 tsp cream of tartar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer until light and fluffy. With a fork, in a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and vanilla. Pour that mixure into the well-beaten sugar and butter and mix well. Add the dry ingredients, which have been mixed together prior, and mix gently. Then pull out The Cookie Thing in the ¼” or 3/8” size and start making cookies! Directions are included but basically, it’s wax paper, measuring guides, dough, then cover it with wax paper and roll. Success!
The cookies are baked at 350 degrees for 10-14 minutes. I found mine were done at 10 minutes, but I also have an oven that runs about 5 degrees on the high side and I typically adjust to compensate, either in temperature or time.
I know you’ll enjoy using the Cookie Thing as much as I do, and as much as my testers did. I want to thank my models, my great-niece, and my youngest daughter, for their help in showing how easy this tool is for hands of all sizes to use. (I also did a pile of dough and found it to be much easier than the typical rolling pin and mat. High praise, truly, given how many rolling pins and set-ups I have tried.)
All ready to go!
“Piece of cake, Aunt Dee!”
And there you have it!
“My turn, Mom!”
Wait, this is so not on our schedule….
Fast-forward to my niece’s first tray of Thanksgiving-shaped cookies. Perfect thickness!
And her favorite! I can see why, can’t you?
Using the Cookie Thing made these cookies such an enjoyable experience, I’m using it all the time now!
What a cool, simple idea! Just wish I had time to bake cookies this year. Maybe I’ll make New Year’s cookies instead….
Isn’t it though? I wish I’d thought of it! I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to get all my Thanksgiving baking in, we had a bit of a delay as our hot water chose last night to burst a seam…it’s being repaired right now but it put me behind for the day as we had so much homeowner’s warranty dealies to mess with. A friend of mine is doing a combo Christmas/NYE cookie party, so I think it’s a perfect time to make cookies!
Such a fun idea:)
Simple but ideal! 🙂
This is really neat! This would help me more than the kids especially with my cutout cookies.
Yeah, I wanted to say the kids appreciate it more than me as dough can be tough sometimes, but who am I kidding? I’ll definitely get more use out of it…but at least they’re going to be more into helping? If you order one, let me know what you think!
Very neat!! Looks like you two had a fun time as well. 🙂
P.S. Your kitchen layout looks almost exactly the same as mine. lol But I love your countertops more than mine.
We did! It as her first time in my new house so I had to keep reminding her that we aren’t formal, all she needs to do is speak up! And thanks! I love the granite, I’ve always wanted them and we were really fortunate they were already here in the house when we bought it. Stuff like new water heaters (today’s latest LOL) make it harder to do the ‘fun’ upgrades!
I NEED this so bad! I am going to check this out because I make a lot of sugar, and gingerbread cookies and can never get the thickness right. I absolutely have to have this!
If you buy it, let me know what you think! Half my gingerbread men every year were the wrong thickness — no more of that!
I love the mess free way that you roll out your dough! You are a girl after my own heart! lol! Great recipe!
Thanks! I love it! I hate scraping up dough and wasting so much. This solves the problem and saves me a ton of time!
Very cool, we love to bake cookies, thanks
Glad you liked reading about it! I am so glad I was able to try it out — I’m totally sold!
Great idea! I am going to do that when we make cookies!
Enjoy, Shanna! I only wish this had been around sooner! Susan has come up with a perfect idea!
Share some pictures if you order one! I wish I’d run into this years ago. There are a lot of cookies out there missing arms and legs or heads because my dough was too thin! 😉
Dee B, thank you! I love seeing families enjoy the parts of the holidays with better results and less stress. I hope you will try my gingerbread recipe on the website, it has been a big hit over the years. Happy Thanksgiving!
Susan, you’re very welcome! It was a blast having the girls work on the cookies together and I see many more cookie parties in our future. I will look for your recipe for use at our gingerbread event, thanks for sharing! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, too!
Wow, that is so cool! What a neat idea!
It’s genius!
I like cookies but unfortunately I don’t like to cook 🙁
Then you need to hit up those that do! 😉 Enjoy your Thanksgiving!
That is so cool! I need a set 🙂
It’s pretty darn cool! (And ooh, I am so headed over to your midnight mints recipe!!)
I love that idea, so simple. Your niece did a great job, love the flower.
Thank you! I will pass it along to her, she will be really pleased 🙂 She’s a “movie star” now! Loved having the chance to include her!
How cool is that. I tend to sometimes roll mine out a bit thin and have to roll it on top of itself and try again. This might be a necessity in our cookie baking.
Let me know if you get it, Kimberly! I’d love to see what others use it to make! I’m going to try the gingerbread recipe on the site for our holiday cookies this year.
It’s one well thought out baking helper, that’s for sure!
Definitely! I wish I’d thought of it — genius and simple!
This is such a great idea to make cookies!
And so easy! I don’t know why I wasn’t doing this with the wax paper all along!
What a neat tool. When I roll cookie dough it always comes out thick on some places and too thin on others and then the cookies cook unevenly. This looks like the perfect solution
It sure made all the difference for me — I’ve always had the same problem, too. Thanks for posting!
Such a great idea. So simple.
Yes! I’m so glad she followed-through with the great idea by producing it. Cookies are a lot easier now 🙂