10 tools you need to make the best holiday cookies

Holiday baking can go one of two ways—it's either a relaxing, carefree celebration of the season with loved ones, or an exhausting odyssey through unknown territory. Whether you’re going to be eating or gifting your creations, you want them to be great—and using the right tools is the place to start.

Baking is an art and a science, which means your results will be as good as your tools and your ingredients (and your recipes—please, follow those closely). If you want the holiday cookie-making process to be as smooth and delicious as possible this year, here are the very best baking essentials we’ve tested to help you mix, measure, roll, whip, and flip your way there.

1. This unbeatable stand mixer

If you’re a serious baker around the holidays or otherwise, you’ll need a stand mixer—and the KitchenAid Artisan is the quintessential choice. Easy to set up and with the quietest motor we tested, the Artisan was a pleasure to use and passed through all our tests with aplomb. Despite its many competitors, our tests prove that it is still the best stand mixer you can buy.

Its merits are many: attachments are easy to put on, remove, and clean; the tilt lever lock works well; the bowl installs smoothly; and the splash guard fits the bowl well and can be slid on without taking apart the mixer.

Owners of KitchenAids consistently get great performance from their mixers for years, so although the price is high, an Artisan mixer is well worth the money. You’ll be churning out holiday bakes with this bad boy for years to come.

$349 at Amazon

2. Our favorite baking sheets

You’ll want to have plenty of baking sheets on hand before you begin your holiday cookie journey. These half-sheets from Nordic Ware, which won our roundup of the best baking trays, are lightweight, large enough to fit more than a dozen cookies, and distribute heat like a dream. Even covered with goodies, the trays are light enough to hold with one hand while you transfer your goodies onto a waiting plate.

If you’re making delicate cookies and are particularly concerned about burnt bottoms, we recommend the AirBake Nonstick Cookie Sheet. Because of AirBake's “micro-dome technology” (the sheet has an insulated “bubble” that separates the bottom of the sheet from the top where your cookies rest), the underside of your cookies will be more even and less likely to burn. During testing, we found this worked nicely for both cookies and pizza.

$21 at Overstock

$34 at Amazon

3. Hassle-free parchment paper or a silpat mat

Nothing is worse than discovering that you’ve ruined your baking tray—and your cookies—by forgetting to line it with parchment paper or a silpat mat. Cookies benefit from the extra layer of protection and it makes cleanup easier, too.

We recommend the flat pre-cut parchment sheets. They fit a standard baking sheet perfectly and always lay flat, so you don't have to wrestle with flattening out an oddly shaped piece pulled from a roll (we've been there)—plus with 200 sheets per pack, you'll be prepared for many holiday seasons to come.

We also love reusable silicone mats because they're a non-disposable purchase that can easily be cleaned and stored for your next bake. Silpat can also prevent the bottom of your cookies from burning, as it keeps them further away from the searing-hot metal of your baking sheet.

$18 at Amazon

$15 at Amazon

4. This sturdy, simple rolling pin

When they say there’s beauty in simplicity, they’re talking about this wooden rolling pin. It’s really just a sturdy wooden cylinder of a medium-heavy weight, nothing more, nothing less. But during testing of the best rolling pins, it rolled out perfect dough every time.

The simple design of this wooden pin, combined with its weight, makes it easy to control the amount of pressure you use based on what you need for your dough. For tough dough you can push a bit harder, and for soft dough you can keep a light touch.

The long, cylindrical body and lack of handles also means that you'll never cut an edge through your dough the way you sometimes might with smaller, handled rolling pins. This translates to an even, non-lumpy dough that's easy to shape however you want.

$25 at Amazon

5. A stackable set of mixing bowls

If you’re not using a stand mixer as you bake, you’ll need some great mixing bowls to get the job done. We prefer stainless steel bowls over glass—there’s nothing to shatter or chip, making them both durable and long lasting, and their lightweight profile makes them easy to use.

We love the Cuisinart Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls because they have nice, tall edges and a comfortable rim to hold onto while whisking. During testing, each bowl was heavy enough to keep movement at a minimum (especially when we placed a towel underneath it) but light enough to hold in one hand while scraping out batter with the other. As a bonus, the bowls come with air-tight plastic lids, so each bowl doubles as storage and transportation container.

$36 at Amazon

6. The best baking spatula we’ve tested

You’ll need a silicone baking spatula to scrape batter and mix ingredients while you bake, even if you’re using a stand mixer. The Di Oro Large Silicone Spatula won its category in our roundup of the best spatulas and is an excellent choice for folding flour into your batter and then scraping down the sides of your bowl. It’s a single, slick piece of silicone, so you don’t need to worry about the head snapping off. The handle is sturdy and solid, while the head is just flexible enough to scrape down tricky-to-reach areas of your bowl.

The one-side-curved, one-side-straight head of this spatula makes it excellent for reaching into different types of corners (like scraping dough from a round bowl or smoothing brownie batter into a square tin). And the medium/large spatula head means you can get the job done quickly and easily—it’s perfect.

$11 at Amazon

7. Our favorite flat spatula for easy lifting

A flat cooking spatula is a kitchen staple—ideal for removing cookies from a baking tray, flipping pancakes and eggs, and any other cooking task that requires slipping under food to move it around.

And the Cutco Turn n’ Serve flat cooking spatula takes the cake. (No seriously, we used it to move a cake and it worked great.) It’s more expensive than I would typically recommend for a spatula, but this is a “you get what you pay for” situation. It’s pricey, but comes with a lifetime guarantee and will never send you back to your utensil drawer looking for a better tool.

$144 at Amazon

8. An oven thermometer for an even bake

If your oven doesn’t perform like it used to and you’re worried about inaccurate temperatures, you’ll need an oven thermometer to perfect your cookies. Our favorite thermometer by Admetior is an efficient, straight-forward thermometer that meets right at the intersection of great functionality and visual appeal. The no-frills model reported temperatures with great accuracy and responded quickly to any changes in heat.

A temperature gauge that starts at 50° F ensures that you can see the needle move even at room temperature. It's effortless to hang on the oven rack, and although the face is small, it's easy to read thanks to clear, bold print and distinct tick marks.

$15 at Amazon

9. This versatile cooling rack

You’ll obviously need a solid cooling rack (or four) at the ready for your holiday cookies, but did you know they can also be used to cook? Line a baking sheet with a wire rack like this one from Checkered Chef and you'll create the perfect convection cooking space. You see, the air will be able to circulate underneath your food, creating the crispiest bacon or Brussels sprouts on the block.

Long story short—you can never have too many wire racks.

$22 at Amazon

10. Our favorite storage containers

Once you’ve baked all your delectable, festive cookies, you’ll need somewhere to put them. We recommend having our favorite set of storage containers at the ready for storage, transport, and gifting.

We love that these Pyrex containers nest within each other for easy storage, they don't impart off-flavors into our food, and they're marked as dishwasher-, microwave-, and oven-safe. And they’re not just for cookies—they aced every test we could think of. They didn't leak water when we sloshed them around and didn't burst open or shatter when we dropped them from a countertop. When we froze them, expanding food didn't break through the seal and they resisted stains.

$80 at Williams Sonoma