How to Dry Cookie Cutters
I have more cookie cutters than I care to admit. Most of them have never been used. The cutters I do use all the time show signs of wear and tear and have some rusty colored spots. I have been known to leave a cutter or two in a sink full of water overnight and they get sposts. Ugly spots. I am going to show you how to dry cookie cutters so you don’t have this problem.
I have always liked hand washing dishes. When I am in the kitchen, there is a dish tub full of hot soapy water ready to help tackle my mess. I know I am a weirdo but, you love me anyway. Don’t you??
How to dry cookie cutters:
Anyway, after I bake my cookies and remove them from the oven, I let them cool off a little. When they are cool enough to remove from my baking sheet, I wash the baking sheet and cutters right away. I place the clean cutters on the clean baking sheet.
Then, I place them in the warm oven. The temperature of the oven is usually between 150-200 degrees but turned off. (It looks like my oven is on because I wanted to show you the temp.) I use the warm air to dry my baking sheets and my tin and copper cutters. I simply place them in the oven while I color my icing. When when I am done mixing and stirring, the cutters are nice and dry. This doesn’t work with plastic cutters or the ones with the grip around the top. I think even the low oven temp would melt them.
You put your tin and copper cutters in clean and wet.
They come out dry and spot free!
Look at those happy little cutters! No ugly spots so they will last for years. In case you are wondering, I got the cutters from Karen’s Cookies. Click for the baby, girl and the boy.
If you do have a tin cookie cutter with the rusty colored spots on it, you can save them with a little work. I will show you how.
All you need is a green scrubby thing, some good old baking soda and some elbow grease.
Before: Look how sad this poor cutter is!
After! Almost new again! I could have saved myself a lot of time and work if I would have washed and dried it as soon as I finished using it. But I am happy to know how to save them if I do leave them in a pan full of water overnight. I can clean them and don’t have to worry about using cutters that look bad. Clean cutters make me happy.
If you are looking for more tips and tricks, you may enjoy the “Beginners Guide to Cookie Decorating”.
Bear hugs,
Lisa…this is a great tip! Ironically I have done this with my icing “tips”, but it never even dawned on me to do it with my cutters. Duh! TFS!
Awesome
Thanks
What a fabulous tip!
Great tip! I’ve done this with both my cutters and tips for years. I don’t remember where I first got the idea from either. My problem is that after I put my cutters and tips in a sink full of hot soapy water, I get distracted and sometimes don’t get back to them for quite a while, and then I need to scrub off the the rust that I swear starts to form immediately on the tin! If you ever have problems with spots or staining on copper cutters, I swear by Penny Brite Copper Cleaner (available at CopperGifts.com and Amazon.com). It really does make them look as shiny as brand new! It’s supposed to work well on stainless steel and chrome as well, although I haven’t tried it for that.
I have a jar of Penny Brite Copper Cleaner under my sink! Awesome stuff !!! I have not used it on stainless steel or chrome either. I will have to try it. Thanks for the tip:)
Hey Lisa!! I gave this tip to Pam (Cookie Crazie) a while ago. Not sure if it was her blog or FB. But I’ve been doing it ever since I learned about it working in a Pastry Kitchen. We made individual cheesecakes and mousse cakes in metal rings, which were a pain to wash and dry (and there were so many). My Pastry Chef taught me to put them in the oven for a few minutes after we were done baking.
AND, I have to say, I had one of my own assistants put a plastic one in the oven to dry. DOH!
NOT saying I’m the originator of the idea, just sharing where I learned it!
Super tip with the baking soda, that I never knew. I just tossed the rusty old ones and bought new ones. Now I can save a couple bucks!
Thanks for sharing Laura! I found the source of this tip. It was in a book Bea gave me a few years ago. I updated the source in my post.
I never would have thought about drying my metal rings in the oven! Thanks for opening my eyes because it will keep them nice and new.
Yikes! Plastic in the oven stinks!! I have melted a few things before! It was awful to get the plastic out and remove the stinky burnt plastic out of my oven and house! YUCK!!! LOl
Great practical post, Lisa. 🙂
I took Laura’s advice about a year ago and have been drying my cutters this way since then. It sure makes sense. And I don’t have rusty cutters. Yeah!
Yeah for clean cutters!!!!
Love this tip!
Awesome post! I have always wondered why and how. Thank you so much for sharing.
Words u will never hear me utter… “I have always liked hand washing dishes”. 🙂
I just got that Cookie Craft book and can’t wait to dive into it! I’m getting ready to move so I’m saving it for the drive in the Uhaul.
I love that book! There are some great tips in there! Happy moving:)
This is great to know I didn’t know how to dry cookie cutters lol. Thanks for posting this!
Thanks, Lisa! I knew (and always use) the baking sheet drying method, but LOVE that we can give them a new shine with baking soda… that thing is good and cheap!
I do this with my toaster oven, since half the time I put my cookies in the freezer to chill prior to baking and my big oven isn’t hot yet. Works GREAT!
I dry my metal cutters with my toaster oven, since half the time I put my cookies in the freezer to chill prior to baking and my big oven isn’t hot yet. Works GREAT!
I had read about drying cookie cutters in the oven a month or so ago (and am sooooo happy I did!!!), but I had no idea about the baking soda/rust thing. That’s amazing and thank you so much for posting it. After reading the comment section, I had a huge “duh” moment! It never occurred to me to dry my tips the same way as the cookie cutters. BIG “DUH!!!”. LOL I guess I’m a classic example of a “can’t see the forest for the trees” kind of person. ha! 🙂
Haaaaaaa….. of course everyone still loves you even though you love hand washing dishes. How could they not? I wash all my dishes by hand, not because I love it but because I’ve never owned a dishwasher. My Mom always said that’s why she had two kids, one to wash and the other to dry…. that, and the fact she didn’t want to give up any of her cupboard space to install a dishwasher. Would you still love ME if I said I don’t even know HOW to work a dishwasher? :o)
I love you no matter WHAT D.J. because you are AWESOME!!!! 😉
What a great tip! Thank you 🙂
You are very welcome:)
What a great post Lisa! I normally wash my cutters and dry them with a towel right away but every now and then I’m guilty of washing them and throwing them on a drying mat and forgetting about them. Then I’ll notice some with rust spots. Arrrgh! I’m going to try this next time so I save myself the step of drying with a towel because I’m just plain lazy! LOL!
Only fellow cookiers can relate to the cutter obsession. I have so many cutters in containers and like you so many have never been used. I even have multiples of the same cutters. Why? I don’t know–I guess I forget that I already had a particular cutter. It’s sad how obsessed I am with cutters. So many cutters so little time!
I totally agree Melissa! My goal for this year was to use every cookie cutter I had at least once before I bought more….Bahahaha!!! Didn’t happen!!!
And I have multiples also:)
I always “bake” my cutters to dry them, too! I also do it for muffin tins & cake tins, and other baking trays as well.
That is a FANTASTIC tip. thanks
I have been doing this for 20 years! Sometimes, I have quite a load of stuff in there. I put strainers, sifters, cookie sheets, whisks, anything cast iron (I store 2 frying pans in the oven.), and just about anything metal in the oven to dry. I put things in that have wooden handles, but not plastic ones.
Hi, would you share where you found the cute baby cookie cutter?
Great idea! I always hand wash mine and immediately dry but this is better and my oven is usually still warm after the cookies cook! Thanks for the tip!
I realize this is an old post, but wanted to say thanks for letting me know my rust spotted cutters are salvageable. Not using my brain, I set some new cutters in a sink full of hot, soapy water, to let them sit for a bit. Was trying to get off the silly price tag glue (why can’t all companies use the stickers that peel off easily??). Well, the kids & I got busy making some foodies we found on Pinterest, and a “bit” turned into 1/2 the day. Needless to say, they were quite rusty when I got to them.
Will definitely give this method a go as I hate to pitch them out, especially considering they’re brand new. Thanks for the tips!!
I am glad you can use this information Stacie. I have done the same thing many times before. It takes a little scrubbing but it is worth it.
Hi Lisa,
THANK YOU!! I just found this post through pinterest. I have been drying metal kitchen utensils, cookie cutters, pans, strainers, etc. in the oven for many years. I have over 4000 cookie cutters, some of which have turned black over the years. I’m going to grab a couple and see if the baking soda helps. I may get ALL the metal cutters out and inspect them for rust, too.
After reading the comments, I think I’ll get some Penny Brite, too. When I was a kid, there was a product called Twinkle for copper and it was FANTASTIC. Sadly, I haven’t seen it in the stores for MANY years. After MUCH research online, I recently started using ketchup on my copper cutters to get the YUCK off (coat generously and leave for a few hours or overnight. It d
oesn’t work if you don’t leave it.) but then they needed shining. Hopefully, the Penny Brite will work.
On another note, so that nobody feels guilty about their cutters rusting…..I have several cutters that I bought at DisneyWorld in 1996. They have been wrapped in acid-free tissue paper and sealed in ziploc bags ever since and they STILL rusted!
Thanks again!
Hi Laurel,
Thanks for leaving a comment! I glad drying cookie cutters in the oven works for you. It has saved so many of mine over the years.
I agree about cutters rusting on their own. I had a few that had never been used and they did the same thing as your Disney cutters. It’s kind of sad but good to know that we can make them shine again. 😉
What also works for me is to put the cutters on a cookie sheet and place the tray on a radiator- this only works when it is cold but I do most of my cut out cookies in the winter so the radiators are warm. This works for cookie tins also. Remember to place your cutters with the rolled edge facing down to drain the water.