How to….make your own frozen chocolate chip cookie dough

Does anyone else have this problem?…

You make up a double batch of Nate’s Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies, which should give you at least 6 dozen cookies (using my Pampered Chef medium scoop).  You’re excited because you want to use them for school lunches, a few for an after school snack.  You’re thinking you should be good for the week.  Then reality hits, your darling husband eats a few (or more), the kids get home and have a few (sneak a few more), the next thing you know your 6 dozen cookies are gone in 48 hours (or less).

SOOO frustrating!

Yesterday I was determined to best them all!

I made up the recipe as I always do but this time instead of baking all 6+ dozen cookies I only baked 3 dozen.  I took the rest of the un-cooked dough and scooped them out like I would if I was baking them and put them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and slid them in the freezer.  I let them freeze for a couple hours and then put them all into a gallon sized ziplock freezer bag.  Because they are *pre-frozen* they don’t clump together and NOW I can pull out a few at a time and bake them up just when needed.  The kids can have fresh baked cookies in their lunches and it is SO much cheaper than buying frozen cookie dough.

After they had hours to freeze yesterday and I was sure they were totally frozen I took out a few and baked them to see if they took any longer to cook from a fully frozen state.  The cook time increased from approx. 10 minutes to approx. 11 minutes and they tasted amazing (I had Nate taste them since it is his recipe and he said you couldn’t tell a difference!).

I am now REALLY set for at least the week!

A few photos of the process

Here is the dough all scooped up, lined up, and ready to go in the freezer.  They don’t need room like when you put them on a cookie sheet to bake but I didn’t want them touching either.

Here they are freezing on the quick freeze shelf in my freezer.

And here is the wonderful bag full of frozen cookies ready to be cooked at a moments notice.

I can’t wait to try this with some of my other favorite cookies.  It feels like less of a waste to get everything out to make the cookies knowing they’ll be around for a while!

You can find Nate’s AMAZING Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe here.  It is definitely a crowd pleaser!

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