I don’t know about you, but I often find myself in the mood for cookies. The only problem, is I don’t always want to bake a whole batch if I don’t have a plan to get rid of most of them, because inevitably this just means I will eat way too many. Ha.
And this is where learning how to freeze cookie dough balls has come in handy.
It’s easy enough to make a batch of cookies, or even a double batch, and then freeze the balls so I can bake them 1-2 at a time whenever I feel like. It’s a present for your future self, really. 🙂
This can work well for almost any butter-based cookie recipe. I usually have snickerdoodles or chocolate chip cookie dough in a freezer at any given time.
Once you make the dough recipe, use a cookie scoop to measure out the dough and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment or wax paper. Freeze (uncovered) for 1 hour.
One tip: if your freezer has a funky smell, add a small bowl of baking soda to it (this also work in the refrigerator) as you don’t want non-cookie smells settling into your cookie dough balls.
After this initial freeze, simply add the dough balls to a reusable (or disposable) Ziploc bag. You may also want to add a note to the inside, or taped to the outside, with the baking temperature and duration.
Place the sealed bag in your freezer and you’re ready to make yourself a super small batch of cookies any time you feel like it. Enjoy! -Emma
Looking at all of those uniform doughballs is so aesthetically pleasing!
When you go to cook them, consider using your toaster oven. It’s a little faster, a lot cooler for the house, and the smaller pans force you to bake just a couple at a time!
What a great idea to have yummy cookies all of the time.!
You can also freeze the baked cookies! Then I warm them up for 5 min.
Thank you, Emma, this is a brilliant idea! I’m going to make a double batch the coming weekend.
Good idea! Do your wait for these cookie balls to defrost before baking? Do you know how freezing will affect the cooking length and/or temperature? I’m assuming you have to cook them for longer than if they were fresh.
I bake them right out of the freezer on parchment paper or a baking mat. Usually it doesn’t change the bake time (as most of the time the recipe called for chilled dough anyway) but it could by a minute or two. Best to just keep an eye on them the first time you bake, every oven is a little different anyway. Good luck!
When I do this with my personal favourite cookie recipe which is a chocolate chip cookie I have to add a minute and a half to the cook time