The Cookie Cutter Hack For Festive Holiday Fudge

For some reason, the holiday season makes people not only want to eat delicious, sweet things but eat them in the shape of other, non-edible things. Can you eat a real house? Heck, no! But a gingerbread house can be quite toothsome. Are you gonna take a big bite out of your Christmas tree? Not likely, but a sugar cookie in the shape and color of one is visually appealing as well as tasty. Well, add one more baked good to this list of edible-representations-of-the-inedible: mitten-shaped fudge pieces! 

Wool mittens might make for a lousy snack, but a mitten- (or Christmas tree, or ornament) shaped piece of fudge, still encased in its metal cookie cutter and decorated with icing or little candy buttons will brighten anyone's season. Yes, you read that right: These treats need to be baked in their cookie cutters, rather than being shaped once out of the oven. Is this doable? Absolutely, once you're aware of a few caveats.

The kind of fudge you make isn't really important. Generally speaking, its a pretty sturdy, simple confection (as exemplified by this 4-ingredient fudge recipe). You can use peanut butter or butterscotch chips to your heart's content. Having said that, it's best to not try substituting brownie batter for fudge. Trying to make cookie cutter brownies will almost certainly lead to a mess which will still taste delicious but resemble a shapeless brown puddle. 

This brings us to the cookie cutter part. As you probably know, cookie cutters are designed to be used for shaping stuff that's already been baked, not as baking implements themselves. It should go without saying (but we'll say it anyway) that you should never put plastic into the oven — and you should likewise avoid using cookie cutters made from aluminum or tin, they're just not built for it. This particular confection should be made with high-quality stainless steel cookie cutters — which you might very well be giving away to dinner guests wrapped in individual bags and tied with a ribbon. (And if you are making the fudge as gifts, using copper cookie cutters would make them absolutely gorgeous.)

There are a couple more prerequisites for the kind of cookie cutters you can use to make this festive fudge. They need to not be intricately shaped; this is fudge, after all — not the kind of raw material for nuanced visual art. Instead, choose basic cookie cutter shapes like the ones mentioned above: mittens, evergreen trees, or simple round ornaments. Beyond that, make sure your cookie cutter candidates are ½-inch thick to not only ensure portion control but even baking. Oh, and you also need to put each cutter on its own piece of aluminum foil, cut large enough to wrap tightly around the sides to make a secure bottom.

So, following these various caveats and admonitions, it's completely possible to serve gorgeous, festive cookie cutter fudge to your dinner guests this season; a more upscale (but no less delightful) take on the same old cookie-cutter holiday cookies.