One of my first memories of Christmas baking is watching my mom cut shapes out of sugar cookie dough, then ball up the scraps to roll out again. Repeat this process, and the ball of scraps gets smaller and tougher. I didn’t have much patience for it as a kid, and now that I’m baking with my own kids, we do things a little differently. We consider the scraps to be cookies in their own right, and we bake them as-is.
The resulting cookies are what I call “scrappies.” They’re irregularly shaped, containing the outlines of gingerbread arms and snowman hats. I don’t ball them up and roll them out again; I just cut out the shapes I want (or have the kids do that step), and put everything on a baking tray. The nice cookies go on one tray, to be carefully decorated and lovingly cared for until they can be served or gifted; and the scrappies go on the other side, to be smeared with icing and devoured willy-nilly.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
The scrappies solve a handful of minor problems all at the same time. First, there’s the tedium of re-rolling the scraps into a smaller and smaller canvas for cookies. This can take forever, Zeno’s paradox style. If the kids are having fun cutting them out, great, but usually everybody is impatient to get on to the decorating and the eating.
Second, there’s the fact that re-rolling doesn’t make for very good cookies. As Allie Chanthorn Reinmann, our food editor, told me, “re-rolling cookie dough more than once can overwork the mixture, resulting in stronger gluten development. A stronger gluten network leads to tougher cookies, and not as much rise.” From a taste and texture standpoint, you’re better off baking the scraps as-is.
And then we get to the more serious issues, like how soon the kids and I can eat the cookies we’re making. Do you just chow down on a perfect gingerbread man? “Accidentally” break his head off? Wait until you see someone else sneaking a bite, and then declare that fairness insists you get a cookie too? Or make the argument that you’re not doing your due diligence as a chef unless you taste your creations early and often?
No worries when you have scrappies. The “good” cookies and the scrappies come out of the oven at the same time. You can break a scrappie to test its doneness. You can sample one to evaluate its flavor and crunch. And, best of all, you have a free supply of snacking material and a test canvas for decorations. The two-year-old wants to squeeze icing all over something? She can squeeze it onto a scrappie. I’ll be doing the same, applying a squiggle of the surplus onto a cookie that looks like a squiggle itself.