1. Making Icing? SIFT.

Sift. Sift. Sift.

I cannot stress this enough. If you don’t sift your confectioner’s sugar, you will be left with little white clumps in your icing. Not very attractive in my opinion. Do you want white clumps in your icing?

Don’t be that person.

2. No Piping Bag? No Problem

Make a tiny snip at the end of a ZipLock bag. Problem-solved. Fitting a Wilton cake-decorating tip inside works just as well, too. This also is useful for drizzling melted chocolate.

3. Making Brownies? Line the pan.

Lining the pan is a game-changer. Let me tell you: it defeats the age-old hassle of trying to individually slice the finished product and remove them in one piece. If you place aluminum foil or parchment paper in the pan, leaving enough to fold over the handles, and then spray the inside with non-stick spray before you pour in the batter, it makes for an easy removal: lifting it right up and out.

4. Measure Flour With a Spoon

When you dive the measuring cup into the flour, you don’t realize how densely packed it is. It leaves you with more than the recipe calls for. Carefully spoon the flour into the measuring cup and then level it off.

5. Invest in a cookie-scoop

Because what’s better than having uniform cookies that bake evenly? This is a must-have during December.

6. Chill the cookie-dough

This prevents the dough from overly-spreading in the oven.

7. Slightly under-bake the cookies

Once they’re out of the oven, they’ll continue setting in the pan. But do you know what that’ll leave you with? A soft, chewy texture that’ll leave you thanking the heavens they didn’t bake for that extra minute or two.

8. Pay close attention to what temperature the ingredients should be

Contrary to my mother’s beliefs, there is a huge difference between melted and softened butter. Most cookie recipes call for room-temperature butter. Sometimes eggs are called to be room-temperature as well.

It’s all about texture.

9. Take Your Time to Follow Each Step

Don’t just toss all the ingredients in the bowl and stir. First cream the butter and sugars, add your eggs and your flavoring, and then work your way up to combining the dry ingredients.

What’s the purpose of this? Well, 1.) creaming together butter and sugar incorporates air into your batter/dough, leaving the finished the product light in texture and 2.) it allows the sugar to become evenly dispersed throughout the dough/batter.

10. Wear sweatpants

Don’t kid yourself. You’re going to taste-test here and there with all the holiday baking, and before you know it, the number on the scale will go up.

It’s apart of the holiday.

So, don’t get yourself down about it. It’s not Christmas without weight-gain. That’s what New Year’s resolutions are for.