At this very moment, seasonal bakers around the world are bookmarking cookie recipes, tracking down special ingredients, and panicking when they realise they forgot to leave the butter out to soften. Welcome to cookie swap season.

If you happen to have any Christmas cookies still hanging out, chances are they're past their eating prime. Stale cookies aren't the bad news you think they are though, as they can now become that divine substance known as "cookie butter".

Chilling your dough is a necessary step when making cut-out sugar cookies, but rolling out a super hard disk of cold dough can take a good bit of effort. To save yourself all that arm work (and a bit of time) roll it out before chilling.