All cookie decorators have been there…we often need a unique or specific cookie cutter and you don’t have it. And listen, I know how addicting it is to buy ALL the cookie cutters! But I am here to tell you, you don’t need ALL the cutters! I’m sharing my tips on how to hand cut sugar cookies to save money and have one less cutter to store. I actually love being resourceful and avoiding buying cookie cutters for every set. Let’s dive into how easy hand cutting sugar cookies really is!
To Buy A Cutter Or Not…That Is The Question
Whether you are a hobby baker or own a bakery business, there are definitely cutters you will use over and over again. Those are the shapes you want to have a reliable cutter for, especially since using a cutter is faster than hand cutting. In THIS post, I suggest certain sets and shapes every cutter should have in their collection for regular use. I also recommend a good baby shower cutter set, like THIS one, which many cookiers use on repeat.
But if you bake a lot or run a bakery, you will regularly encounter orders or sets when you need specific cutters. If you only need a pretty small number of a certain shape and you may not need it again for the rest of the year, please do not waste your money buying a cutter. My daughter commonly has small custom orders (1-2 dozen) and if she bought new cutters for every order, she wouldn’t make any money! These are the ideal times you can easily hand cut your cookies to save!
Hand Cut Cookie Templates
There are a few different ways to easily create a template to use to hand cut sugar cookies. You can simply print a shape, cut and use as a paper template. I like to use cardstock for a sturdier template. You can also draw or trace a shape onto cardstock. Something we commonly do is use our Procreate app to trace a shape electronically and be able to print it off to create the template. Lastly, if you have a projector, you could project directly onto your dough and cut. I actually find that to be the most difficult and prefer to have a template to cut around.
In today’s example, I used the Procreate app to create this set of farm animal shapes. I’m happy to share here in case anyone wants to print these for your own templates!
Like I said, you can simply print on cardstock, but if you’d like to keep for future use, I suggest using packaging tape to laminate your template. Or if you really want to make a template that will last, you can trace it onto a thin sheet of plastic – like a plastic folder and cut to create a plastic template.
Cutting Your Dough
Once you have your template, it’s very easy to cut your shapes. You will roll out your dough like usual. My recipes never require chilling your dough, but some cookiers find it easier to hand cut chilled dough. I guess it’s personal preference, but I never chill mine and they come out just fine! All you need is a Pen blade like THESE and you’re ready to cut. I use this same set and like that is comes with 3 size/shape blades.
Place your template on your dough and use your pen blade straight up and down to cut around your template. Try to avoid dragging or pulling it through the dough as your edges may end up rough. You can then transfer to your cookie sheet just as you normally would. I use a floured offset spatula to move my dough to my sheet.
Hand Cutting Examples
Here, you can see how I printed my farm animal templates on cardstock, then laminated with packaging tape.
Now you can see my hand cut shape in my dough.
Here, my shapes are ready to bake!
And finally, here are my farm animal cookies baked!
Something to keep in mind is that if I had to make 100 of these farm animals, I would buy a cutter! You’re not going to want to hand cut a large number just for the sake of time. But again, for the occasional shape you may only need once or infrequently, now you know how to hand cut sugar cookies with ease!
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