Best Christmas Cookies

Decorating Christmas cookies can be difficult enough without struggling with a problematic dough. Many dough recipes crumble easily or stick tenaciously to the rolling pin when you try to roll them out. Or they toughen when the scraps are rerolled. We wanted easy-to-roll, sturdy, flavorful cookies. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• Leave out the egg whites. The water in the egg whites blends with the flour to form gluten, so the more the dough is rolled, the tougher it will become.
• Use lots of fat. A combination of egg yolks, sour cream, and butter keeps the dough short and very flavorful. The tanginess of the sour cream offsets the sweetness of the sugar.
• Sandwich the dough between sheets of parchment or waxed paper to ensure that the dough doesn’t stick to the rolling pin. The paper will also minimize the amount of flour required to prevent sticking--too much additional flour can lead to tough cookies.