Underutilized Technology: The Freezer

Recently we started to use the freezer for more than just ice cream and extra portions of baby food.

Cookie dough has recently taken up residence in our freezer, and all I can say is, why didn’t we do this sooner?

Before, when I baked, I would make all 36 cookies and then rush to eat them in 3 days before they went stale. I can eat a lot of cookies, but 36 in 3 days is a lot even for me. Monsieur is nearly saintlike in his ability to refrain from eating cookies. He’s of no help at all whatsoever. The only way I could finish all the cookies was to eat cookies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I made the necessary sacrifices, but even eating cookies for every meal and sometimes in between, a couple at the end were no longer up to snuff.

Every stale cookie I eat erodes morale and chips away at the good memories of perfectly baked, warm cookies. Stale cookies are not to be tolerated. Not to mention eating cookies at/for every meal violates a number of our new dining principles (as well as common decency).

And this is where the freezer has been so useful. Now, I make a maximum of 12 cookies and the rest are rolled into individual dough balls, frozen separately on a flat surface such that they are not touching, and, once frozen, they all go into a dated Ziploc bag, to be removed and baked at a later time (at the normal temperature and cook time).

Not only does this eliminate the rush of trying to eat cookies before they go bad and eliminate stale cookies altogether, I look brilliant when I produce warm, fresh baked, homemade cookies immediately after dinner with no fuss and no cleanup. I imagine Lucinda Scala Quinn would be proud.

I have made “fresh” cookies for dessert after dinner Friday through Sunday this week and each batch was as delicious and fabulous as the first. Now I just need to make more cookie dough…..

Some of the Soon-to-Be-Regular Cookie Residents of My Freezer

• Raisin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
  • This recipe is the closest I have to a “family secret” recipe. It started when I was in middle school as a “Not Mrs. Fields” variant and has taken on its own life since. 
• Orange Chocolate Chip Refrigerator Cookies 
  • From a Williams Sonoma Cookie & Biscotti Cookbookmy mom gave me when I was in college. Of all the recipes in that cookbook, this is the only one I’ve ever made more than once, and is my favorite use of mini chocolate chips*. The page is stained by butter and cinnamon and marked with an Albertson’s receipt dated February 3, 2000. I imagine serving these cookies warm on saucers aside steaming cups of black tea or coffee. If you think I’m kidding, I recently purchased saucersfor just this purpose.  
• Rosemary White Chocolate Chip Cookies (gluten free and flour versions)
  • From The 4-Hour Chef. This is the first batch of cookie dough I ever froze, primarily so that I could share the cookies with a gluten intolerant friend. She housesat for us, and when we returned, there was only one cookie left in the freezer. I wasn’t happy with the texture of the first batch and resolved to tweak them when I make them again, but they were a a hit regardless.

P.S. Despite my biologist mother’s aversion to raw fish, raw cookie dough has never bothered her in the least. The second biggest perk of having frozen cookie dough in the freezer? Eating cookie dough without cleanup.

*My favorite thing to get in the mail? 6 bags of miniature chocolate chips. Monsieur requests soy free.

What is your favorite thing to freeze?

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