ere are two recipes that I like. Hope you have success with them! Chocolate Cut Out Cookies Cookie type: cut outs This is another recipe from www.cookierecipe.com. The recipe was submitted by Robin J. The cookies will puff up slightly. The recipe makes about 6 dozen cookies depending on the cookie cutter. Ingredients 1 cup butter or margarine 2 cups white sugar 3 eggs 2 teas vanilla 3 cups flour 1 teas baking powder 10 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder Directions Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy; add eggs, beating well. Mix in vanilla. Combine flour cocoa powder and baking powder, add to cream mixture. Mix well. Cover and chill for 2 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough in half. Roll out each half to ¼ inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Place on lightly greased cookie sheets. Decorate. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Decorate. Cut-Out Chocolate Cookies Cookie Type: Cut-out This is another recipe out of HersheyÂs Best-Loved recipes. Good texture and taste. It makes about 3 dozen cookies depending on the size of your cookie cutters. Ingredients ½ cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened ¾ cup sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 ½ cups flour 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa ½ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon salt Directions: Beat butter, sugar, egg and vanilla in a large bowl until and fluffy. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to butter mixture, blending well. Chill dough about 1 hour or until firm enough to roll. Heat oven to 325 degrees F. On a lightly floured board or between 2 pieces of wax paper roll a small portion of the dough at a time to ¼ inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters; place on an ungreased sheet. Bake 5 to 7 minutes or until no indentations remain when touched lightly. Cool slightly and remove from cookie sheet onto wire racks. Coo completely, decorate as desired. Hints, Tips, Tricks and How to Cheat: I found that the dough cracked when I tried to roll it out after chilling. The dough needs to be at room temperature. The cookies also needed a longer baking period 8-9 minutes. Also, I found that if you roll the dough on a silicone mat that is floured, then cut out the cookies, it makes it easier to get the cookies onto the baking sheet.

So interesting how a little bit of this or that...or none at all...can make a difference. Years ago I had a request to make a lot of decorated sugar cookies for an event. I was so frustrated because my TNT recipe was NOT working. The cookies were spreading like crazy in the oven. I was pretty frustrated since any/all advice I got from those I thought could help were all tips I already knew. I'd even sent an email to Shirley Corriher. Plus, I'd made the cookies a zillion times. Finally, a caterer I knew asked about my baking sheets. I'd bought those insulated "air-bake" cookie sheets and was using them. Never even thought about that and no one else had asked. She told me to go back to my faithful non-insulated, heavy-duty aluminum pans. She said the insulated sheets heat more slowly giving the cookies more time to spread. Problem solved! I've since had others tell me they don't have the spread problem with their insulated sheets. IDK...could be it was just the brand I'd bought but they're long gone.

Thanks for the project. It gave this stay at home something to do for an afternoon. They are more cake like, and don't have the buttery brown sugar taste of the original Tollhouse recipe. So while they are definitely good, I prefer the Tollhouse version, to which I add a couple of extra tablespoons of flour.

Another vote for good old fashioned flat pure aluminum cookie sheets. I didn't mesn to imply that warmth was the only cause of spread—just that no matter what you bake on, if the butter is too warm and soft in the dough, you will have spread. That's also why oil doesn't work well in most cookies. Chloebud, what I do know about a long chill/rest time is that the flour soaks up the water from the butter (and eggs if there are eggs). The result is just druthers. The different level of absoption will give you a different texture, though the difference might be subtle. One problem is that in a long soak, gluten will develop more, making your flour choice more important. You need some gluten for loft and chew, but you don't want tough! I know Chloebud has this down. I'm just pointing out some places where the complexity of it all can trip up people who just change things. I can't even fathom how many thousands of lovely cookies I've baked, but I've know people to use the exact same recipes and fail.