Christmas baking, this is SO simple, why didn't I think of this before?

Last weekend at Ryan's we were baking gingerbread cookies.  I'm never a fan of rolling cookie dough, it always seems to give me problems.  First you chill the dough, then you try and roll it out, and it's so cold, it doesn't roll evenly, then you cut the cookies and they spread too much when you bake them.  It's a royal pain in the patootie.

That's what we did, and it was a pain, and they did spread, but they were wonderful cookies.  Not that heavy, biting bitter gingerbread taste, just a wonderfully mellow great taste, tender and moist, they were super, except for the procedure it took to cook them and their out of shape bodies once they were baked.

And since this isn't my first rodeo with formed cookies, I know that the key to having them bake without spreading is to have really cold dough, and thus the problem, that darned chilled dough and making the cookies quickly to bake.

So, in the middle of the night, when my brain seems to work best, I had a moment of clarity.  Forget chilling the dough, roll them immediately, when they are pliable and easy to work with, cut out the cookies, put them on the cookie sheet, and then chill them in the refrigerator before you bake them.  Why didn't I think of this years ago?  Maybe some of you already know to do this, yours truly had to have a senior moment to figure it out.

We haven't tried this yet, but it has to work better than the way we have done them in the past.

And the recipe for these great cookies - it's Betty Crocker, and she's tried 'n true for recipes that turn out.  Here's the link, the flavor of these cookies is vundebar>>> (We used milk instead of water in the recipe)

I picked up these cutters for Lindsay last weekend in Cincinnati at Williams Sonoma.  They are just adorable. Yeah, I know you want the link.  Here's the click>>>