Every time I make cut-out sugar cookies, the directions say to chill the dough before baking. The chill time is usually anywhere from 2 hours to 24 hours, which is a long time to wait for a cookie. A primary reason for this chill time seems to be to keep the cookies from spreading and to help them maintain their shape. So, I tested different chill times (including skipping refrigeration altogether) using this dough from Sally’s Baking Recipes to find out if refrigeration is actually necessary for cut-out sugar cookies.
The Experiment
- Make the cookie dough.
- Divide the dough into four equal parts, and roll each section of the dough out to ¼ inch thick.
- Chill the dough (or not). The four tests were:
- Not chilling the dough,
- Freezing the dough for 15 minutes,
- Refrigerating the dough for 3 hours, and
- Refrigerating the dough for 24 hours.
- Cut out the cookies using a circle cutter, a tree cutter, and a star cutter.
- Bake and cool the cookies
- Compare the batches of baked cookies.
The Results
I initially thought there would be a visible difference between the chilled and unchilled cookies. But, there wasn’t. So, I measured each cookie in order to see if there was any difference between the batches.
I chose the 2-inch circle cookie cutter because it would be easy to measure the diameter of each cookie to check for spread.
Here are my results for the circle cookies:
| Batch | Diameter | % Spread |
|---|---|---|
| No chill | 2.12 in | 6% |
| Freezer (15 minutes) | 2.17 in | 7% |
| Refrigerator (3 hours) | 2.17 in | 8.5% |
| Refrigerator (24 hours) | 2.07 in | 3.5% |
To compare the tree cookies, I measured the length of the widest point of each cookie. The cookie cutter I used is 3.25 inches at this point.
Here are my results for the tree cookies
| Batch | Diameter | % Spread |
|---|---|---|
| No chill | 3.60 in | 10.8% |
| Freezer (15 minutes) | 3.43 in | 5.5% |
| Refrigerator (3 hours) | 3.41 in | 4.9% |
| Refrigerator (24 hours) | 3.34 in | 2.8% |
The star cookies were a bit harder to measure. I chose this cookie cutter because I wanted to see if the points of the stars got more rounded and bloated. But, I really couldn’t see much of a difference between the stars, and they all looked pretty pointy to me.
Conclusions
For me the bottom line is that the definitely was less spread with the cookie dough that spent a full day in the fridge. But, I’m not convinced it was enough of an improvement to be worth waiting a day. If you’ve got the extra day, by all means, chill your dough. Or if you are looking for extremely precise cut-outs and minimal spreading, maybe it’s worth it. But, at least for the recipe I used, I think you can safely skip the chilling process. The one caveat I’ll add is that the unchilled dough was a bit harder to work with. So, if you are using a more detailed cookie cutter or if you have a lot of cookies to cut out, I would at least give the dough a 15-minute chill in the freezer. Additionally, there are other reasons to consider chilling your dough, such as the texture of the cookie. But, if all you are worried about is the cookies spreading and possibly looking distorted, I say go ahead and bake off these cookies as soon as you want to.
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