Did you know an essential step to making cookies is allowing to rest? Professional bakers world- wide always do this. I did not know anything about resting cookie dough and I've been making cookies for over 60 years.

Here's why it's important: Resting cookie dough, especially in the refrigerator, provides some important benefits. Resting and chilling it will:

•         significantly improve the final cookie's texture and flavor.

•         allow the butter to solidify

•         allows the flour to hydrate, leading to more defined flavor and promotes chewiness

•         prevent excessive spreading during baking

•         result in a taller, chewier cookie

Here's a more detailed look at a few of the benefits:

FLAVOR: Resting gives the dough ingredients time to meld so flavors can deepen, creating a more complex and satisfying taste.

HANDLING: The dough is easier to handle after it has rested--especially nice if making rolled and cut-out cookies. Chilling dough also results in a firmer, less sticky dough.

BETTER BROWNING: Browning is a result of the caramelization that happens during baking. Resting and chilling the dough allows the enzymes in the flour to break down, which promotes an even browning.

Finally, CONVENIENCE: When wrapped properly, cookie dough freezes well. We do this all the time. It's so nice to have cookie dough in the freezer--at the ready for when we have time to bake.

I'll close with my own tip regarding freezing your cookie dough. Save your fruit 6-ounce and 12-ounce frozen juice cans, and when you're making cookies, stuff them with dough--packed tightly. Cover the open ends with plastic wrap, secure with a rubber band, and freeze. Then when you're ready to bake, cut the other end of the can off and use it to push your dough out of the can, slicing cookie rounds as you go.

Of course, you can always just form the dough into a log and wrap it in plastic wrap that way, but having dough in cans is more convenient and it's a slick way to give another use to the can.

But back to just resting and chilling the dough. We're never too old to learn something new, and I am excited to take my cookie-baking to a whole new level using this simple step!