Cookie and bars recipes

Whether you are looking for a tasty tea time treat for a special birthday or occasion, cookies and bars recipes are sure to provide you with plenty of inspiration. Learn to bake best cookies and bars such as 7 layer bars, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and apricot coconut balls should be a delight with these easy to follow recipes with pictures.

There are six types of cookie, made from dough varying degrees of stiffness. Bar and drop cookies are made from soft unchilled dough. For pressed cookies, dough should be moderately stiff; for refrigerator molded and rolled cookies, dough must be stiff, chilled if necessary to make it easy to handle.

• Bar cookies are simplest of all to make. Just spread the dough evenly in a well greased shallow pan, bake, then cut the slab into bars or squares with a sharp knife thin bladed once it has cooled slightly.
• Drop cookies are formed by scooping up teaspoonfuls of soft dough and dropping them about 2 inches apart onto a cookie sheet use a small spatula to shape them.
• Refrigerator cookie dough can be made a week or more ahead, shaped into a smooth roll, wrapped in waxed paper and refrigerated until needed. To bake, slice the roll thinly and evenly with a sharp knife, and arrange slices apart on cookie sheet.
• Molded cookie dough should always be firm enough for shaping in a mold or by hand into balls, crescents and wreaths. Chill dough just until easy to handle.
• Pressed cookies are forced through a cookie press or decorating bag. Dough should be soft enough to go through the press but firm enough to hold its shape. Chill only if directed.
• Rolled cookie dough should be stiff, chilled if necessary, then rolled out and cut into shapes with lightly floured cookie cutters, a pastry wheel, or knife and a pattern. Or dough can be rolled out directly onto cookie sheet, and the cookies cut and trimmings removed. Cut cookies as close together as possible, so that you reduce the amount of rolling that is necessary.

For best results, use clean, shiny aluminum cookie sheets 2 inches smaller all around than the oven so that the heat will be able to circulate evenly. If baking one sheet of cookies at a time, place it in the center of the oven; when baking 2 sheets, stagger the oven racks so that they divide the oven into thirds, switching the sheets once, about half way through baking time, to make certain that cookies brown evenly. Don't grease cookie sheets unless indicated in the recipe, or cookies will tend to spread too much.

When baking several batches in succession, plan ahead so that while the first sheet is in the oven, you are preparing the second one. Let sheets cool before placing more dough on them, or the dough will soften and spread, and finished cookies will be misshapen If you don't have enough spare cookie sheets, use inverted baking pans. Or, place unbaked cookies on a sheet of heavy duty foil and, as soon as baked cookies have been transferred to wire racks, place the foil on the cookie sheet and return it to the oven. Cookies bake quickly, so test them for doneness at the end of the minimum baking time given correctly baked, the cookies will feel set and dry to the touch.