A cookie cutter in

North American English North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures, plus the similarities between the pronunciations (accents), v ...

, also known as a biscuit cutter outside

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

, is a tool to cut out

cookie A cookie is a baked or cooked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chips, n ...

biscuit A biscuit is a flour-based baked and shaped food product. In most countries biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be ...

dough Dough is a thick, malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops. Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavening ag ...

in a particular shape. Keks ausstechen

They are often used for seasonal occasions when well-known decorative shapes are desired, or for large batches of cookies where simplicity and uniformity are required. Cookie cutters can also be used for shaping, molding, forming and cutting numerous other types of foods, including meat patties, flapjacks,

sandwiches A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

and decorative

embellishments In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody (or harmony), but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line (or harmony), provide add ...

for platters (for example, fancy-cut

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

Types and variations

;Cutout: Most commonly made of copper, tin, stainless steel, aluminium, or plastic. Cutouts are the simplest of the cookie cutters; the cutter is pressed into cookie dough that has been rolled flat to produce the shape of the cutter's outline. To keep the dough from sticking, they are often dipped in flour or sugar before use. ;Detail imprint: Commonly made of copper, tin, or plastic. Detail imprints are similar to cutout cookie cutters, except that detail imprints also mark the surface of the dough. ;Cookie mould: Usually made of wood, ceramic, or plastic.

Springerle Springerle is a type of South German biscuit or cookie with an embossed design made by pressing a mold onto rolled dough and allowing the impression to dry before baking. This preserves the detail of the surface pattern. While historical molds sh ...

moulds are the oldest examples of such, and are popular for

Scottish shortbread Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three to four parts plain wheat flour. Unlike many other biscuits and baked goods, shortbread does not contain any leavening, ...

. A cookie mould typically has an ornate design debossed into the surface; the mould is pressed into the cookie dough to produce an embossed design. These moulds may be flat disks or may be in the shape of a

rolling pin Rolling is a type of motion that combines rotation (commonly, of an axially symmetric object) and translation of that object with respect to a surface (either one or the other moves), such that, if ideal conditions exist, the two are in contact ...

. ;Cookie press: An automated or hand-operated

cookie press A cookie press is a device for making pressed cookies such as spritzgebäck. It consists of a cylinder with a plunger on one end, which is used to extrude Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pus ...

, also called a ''cookie gun'', is used to make large batches of cookies quickly. The cookie dough is extruded onto the baking sheet in ornate shapes that would otherwise be too difficult or time-consuming to create by hand. ;Cookie cutting sheet: Used for larger volumes, a production cookie cutting sheet is a piece of sturdy plastic the size of a full

sheet pan Sheet or Sheets may refer to: * Bed sheet, a rectangular piece of cloth used as bedding * Sheet of paper, a flat, very thin piece of paper * Sheet metal, a flat thin piece of metal * Sheet (sailing), a line, cable or chain used to control the cle ...

that essentially has dozens of cutout cookie cutters mounted on to it.Rinsky, Glenn and Rinsky, Laura Halpin.
The Pastry Chef's Companion: A Comprehensive Resource Guide for the Baking and Pastry Professional
'. John Wiley & Sons; 4 February 2011. . p. 77. Rather than rolling out the dough and pressing the cutter into the top of the dough, the cutting sheet is placed on the baking sheet, cutting side up. A sheet of cookie dough, already rolled to the correct thickness, is laid on top of the cutting sheet, and a rolling pin is used to press the dough down on to the sharp edges of the cutting sheet. The cut cookies fall through the holes into the sheet, into their properly spaced positions on the baking sheet. The scrap dough and cutting sheet are removed, and the pan is ready for baking. Cookie cutter sheets allow high volume production without the time or risk of moving cut cookies to baking sheets, resulting in rapid production of a more uniformly shaped and spaced product.

Commercial scale

Cookie cutters generally make a single shape at one time, but other options are available for large-scale production. In 1875, Alexander P. Ashbourne patented the first biscuit cutter in the US, useful for cutting multiple cookies, cakes, or baking powder biscuits at once. It consisted of a board to roll the dough out on, which was hinged to a metal plate with various cutting spring-loaded shapes mounted to it.

References

{{Kitchen tools Food preparation utensils

Types and variations

Commercial scale

See also

References