With the holiday season soon upon us and many cookies to be baked, pastry chef Gail Dosik of One Tough Cookie has some advice when it comes to working with cookie dough. Says Gail:

“Many’s the sugar cookie recipe that instructs you to collect the dough, pat it into a disc wrapped in plastic and refrigerate for an hour or so until firm. You are then instructed to roll the dough out. These recipes tell you that now is the time to sink your cookie cutters in and cut desired shapes.

“What they don’t tell you is that the dough is so soft that it can’t hold any shape, regardless of how many spatulas, shovels or other kitchen accoutrements you’ve purchased to carefully transfer that dough to a cookie sheet. And no matter how careful you are, that gingerbread man is starting to look like Salvadore Dali made him.

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The solution, advises Gail, lies in parchment paper.

1. Take a scoop or two of the dough and place it on a piece of parchment paper. Top with another sheet. Roll dough to desired thickness. Repeat until all dough is rolled out. Use rolling pin bands if you’re not good at judging desired thickness.
2. Place the sheets of dough in the freezer—not in the refrigerator—for at least 30 minutes. The resting dough relaxes the glutens that have been have stirred up while preparing the dough.
3. Preheat the oven. Prepare cookie cutters and cookie sheets.
4. Put a tablespoon of flour onto a small plate and dip the cookie cutter into the flour to coat the edges. This will give your cookies a very sharp, clean edge.
5. Take a piece of dough from the freezer and remove both sheets of parchment paper. Cut the cookies, dipping the cutter in flour. Move cookies to the prepared cookie sheet: no more “shape shifters.”
6. If the dough gets too warm to work with, simply re-cover it with parchment paper, return it to the freezer and take out the next ball of dough. Fill the cookie sheet and bake.