Baker and ‘Master Chef’ judge Christina Tosi shares her top 5 tips for a smooth holiday cookie-baking experience

Christina Tosi is a mastermind when it comes to sweets. Her award-winning bakery, Milk Bar, is well known around the globe taking classics like birthday cake and pumpkin pie and elevating them to the next level. But Tosi says you don't need to be an expert at baking to enjoy making delicious holiday treats this season.

Preparation is key

“I’m a big fan of preparing … because baking, I believe, should be a very joyful act,” says Tosi. “Making sure that you have everything you need is an important piece of it.”

Tosi has a particular habit that ensures she has everything she needs and helps her get excited about the act of baking: She leaves the ingredients stacked on her counter leading up to a big day in the kitchen.

“I just find the most inspiration from it,” she says. “You can taste when someone is excited about what they’re making or baking. The secret to life is having something to look forward to — it’s like a family saying — and it does that, but it also helps to keep me organized.”

The most important holiday baking ingredient

Before everything is placed on the counter with care, the ingredients must be purchased. Tosi says there’s one star in almost every holiday baked good that you might not be buying correctly. “The basic ingredients are important,” she shares. “One of my baking live-and-die-bys is just unsalted butter. Unsalted butter is what you bake with, salted butter is what you put on the table.”

This simple distinction in the dairy aisle makes all the difference in having complete control when it comes to baked goods.

“When you use salted butter, you’re using butter that already has some amount of salt in it, but you don’t really know [how much salt] because it depends on whatever that company’s recipe for salted butter is,” Tosi explains. “It’s never going to make your baked goods taste salty, but you lose the ability to [control the flavors].”

Tips for rolling out cookie dough

The All About Cookies author shares that for her, classic Christmas-shaped cookies are a must-have when it comes to making the season bright. “Holiday cookies for me start with the roll-out cookie cutter cookies,” she says. “That’s what I was raised on and that’s where my most nostalgic holiday baking begins and ends. They’re easy to make, but they’re multi-step so they take time.”

Tosi, who spoke with Yahoo Life on behalf of her latest partnership with Ziploc, shares that for holiday cookies, these plastic bags can help to reduce mess and wasted time.

“I make [rolled cookie dough] in advance and then put it in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and start to roll it out in that bag,” she says. “Because you know the worst part when you make dough that has to be rolled out [is when] you leave it [in the fridge] and you go to roll it out but it’s very cold and brittle. But you can use that Ziploc gallon bag to roll out the dough evenly, without even having to put flour down.”

Once the dough is flat, Tosi likes to stack it in the freezer, so she’s ready to bake all season long. “If you freeze it flat, and line it up [in the freezer] you have a library of dough,” she shares. “For me, that’s one of my ultimate flexes.”

Make a ‘tester cookie’

Baking single-serve cookies is an important baking tip Tosi swears by both at home and in her professional kitchen. “This is something we do in the Milk Bar kitchen: We always make a tester,” she says. “The power of the tester cookie is to take those 6-10 minutes and bake just one cookie from the entire batch to make sure the oven is at the right temperature, the cookie is gooey in the center and crunchy on the outside, you like the size and the shape and everything is set in the right way.”

Tosi explains that, in her experience, taking these few extra minutes to make sure the recipe is exactly to your liking can save a lot of headaches down the line.

“I think one of the biggest holiday angsts is trying something new on for size,” she says. “It feels like we’re cannonballing in, that it’s all or nothing — it’s either a success or it’s a flop.”

“That tester really helps give you confidence and reminds you of the control you have in your kitchen,” she adds. In addition, this practice gives the power back to any bakers trying to add a bit of their own personal tastes to a new recipe.

Cookie transport is important

With counters full of cooled baked goods and festivities going all season long, Tosi says it’s imperative that bakers keep their kitchen stocked with options for transporting their treats. “I’m a very big storage container person, because I like to give away the things I bake,” she says, “and I care about it being the most delicious cookie you’ve ever eaten.”

Whether you’re a professional with a worldwide reputation to uphold, or, you’re locally famous for the best Christmas cookies on your block, Tosi swears having the right container makes the difference between the perfect bite or an experience that falls flat.

“For me, all of the different ranges of Ziploc baggies, from the ones you might have in your drawer or pantry regularly to the very sweet holiday edition Ziploc baggies, they make the perfect transportable piece,” says Tosi. “[A resealable bag] is going to keep your baked goods airtight, lock in the freshness and lock out the moisture that is going to be the death of your baked goods, but also it’s the serving container.”

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