Stack of Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies. (Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Food - Drink
The Kitchen Tool That Can Also Be Used As A Cookie Press
By LAUREN ROTHMAN
It's nice to own a special kitchen utensil for one purpose, like a citrus juicer or milk frother, but it's much more satisfying to get the job done with a multitasking tool. A potato masher seems pretty limited, but it's really a kitchen workhorse that can quickly dice and crush ingredients for sauces and soups, and can even help with dessert.
A potato masher is great for pressing cookies flat while also adding a design on top. It's traditional to press a crosshatch pattern onto the tops of peanut butter cookies using a fork, both for visual appeal and to flatten the cookie to the right thickness, but a potato masher works just as well as a fork and takes a fraction of the time.
Instead of pressing fork tines into the top of rolled balls of cookie dough, press them using a potato masher with a perforated plate; you'll have perfectly flattened cookies with a neat crosshatch design. Also, you can use a masher to apply sugar to the tops of cookies by wetting the masher, dipping it into sugar, and pressing it into the cookies.