The holidays have a funny way of sneaking up on me. One minute it’s early fall and I’m lighting a candle and making something cozy for dinner, and the next, I’m trying to remember whether I have enough butter for three batches of cookies while also figuring out where the roasting pan went.
A little prep now can make holiday cooking and baking so much easier later. Nothing intense, and definitely no need to have your Christmas menu planned months in advance. These are just a few simple things you can do over the next several weeks to save yourself time, money, and unnecessary grocery store runs when the holiday season gets busy.
Start stocking up on baking essentials
You don’t need to buy your entire holiday baking list at once. Instead, start keeping an eye out for good prices on the staples you know you’ll use: flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, chocolate chips, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and plenty of butter.
When something you regularly use is on sale, grab a few extras. Spreading those purchases out over a couple of months is much easier than realizing you need half the baking aisle all at once.
Buy extra butter and freeze it
If there is one ingredient holiday baking seems to consume at a wild rate, it’s butter. Luckily, butter freezes really well. If you find your usual butter at a good price, buy a few extra boxes and tuck them into the freezer for later.
Keep some of that regular butter for baking, but while you’re at it…
Brown some butter ahead of time
Brown butter is one of those little things that makes baked goods taste incredible, but making it every single time adds another pan and another step and quite a bit of time to an already busy bake day.
Brown several sticks at once, let the butter cool, weigh it, label your portions, and refrigerate or freeze them. Remember that browning evaporates some of the butter’s water, so the finished weight will be lower than the weight you started with. Then it’s ready whenever a cookie, cake, or loaf of something cozy calls for it.
Make cookie dough and freeze it
This might be one of my favorite gifts you can give your future self. Many cookie doughs freeze beautifully, especially when you scoop the dough before freezing it.
Freeze the individual dough balls on a baking sheet until solid, then transfer them to a freezer-safe container or bag. When you want cookies, you can pull out exactly as many as you need instead of making an entire batch from scratch.
My chocolate chip cookies bake beautifully straight from frozen at 350°F for about 15 minutes, no thawing required. Freeze the scooped dough balls until solid, then store them in an airtight freezer-safe container until you’re ready to bake.
Make pie dough ahead of time
If pie is part of your holiday plans, the crust is an easy job to knock out early. Make your dough, wrap it well, label it, and freeze it. When pie day arrives, you’ve already crossed one of the messiest steps off the list. If you don’t want to make pie dough, you can also stock up on store bought versions.
Make and freeze your holiday bread
Dinner rolls and sourdough are both great candidates for getting some of the work out of the way ahead of time. Make a batch on a quiet weekend, freeze it, and you’ve already taken one more thing off your holiday cooking list.
For now, I recommend following a tested freezing and reheating method for your particular bread. I’ll be experimenting with my dinner rolls and sourdough loaves and sharing the results once I’ve tested them.
Clean out your freezer
Before you start filling the freezer with butter, cookie dough, pie crusts, stock, and holiday meals, make some room.
Use up the forgotten leftovers, consolidate open bags, toss anything that has been living in there well past its prime, and label or get rid of the mystery containers. You’ll be very happy to have that extra space once holiday cooking begins.
Take inventory of your spice cabinet
Check the herbs and spices you reach for most during fall and holiday cooking: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, allspice, cardamom, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Combine duplicates, replace anything that has lost its flavor, and make sure you actually have enough. Finding out you have approximately one teaspoon of cinnamon left after you’ve already started mixing dough for cinnamon rolls is not ideal.
Make or stock up on broth and stock
Stock disappears quickly once you start making gravy, stuffing, soups, sauces, and braises. If you make your own, start saving freezer-friendly batches now. If you buy it, grab an extra carton or two when you’re shopping so you already have it on hand.
Sharpen your knives
Not particularly glamorous, but incredibly useful. Holiday cooking involves a lot of chopping, slicing, and dicing. Get your knives sharpened now so you aren’t wrestling a dull knife through a butternut squash when you have fifteen other things to do.
Check the boring little things
Take five minutes to look through the supplies that are easy to forget until you run out of them: parchment paper, aluminum foil, freezer bags, storage containers, kitchen twine, cupcake liners, toothpicks, and whatever else you regularly use for baking and entertaining.
It’s also worth checking your baking and serving dishes. Make sure you know where the roasting pan is, that you have enough sheet pans and cooling racks, and that the pie plate you swear you own didn’t mysteriously disappear sometime last Christmas.
Keep your holiday recipes in one place
You absolutely do not need to plan every holiday meal right now. But if there are recipes you make every year, start gathering them into one place. Bookmark the links, flag the cookbook pages, or make one note on your phone with everything together.
That way, when you’re ready to actually plan Thanksgiving dinner or start Christmas baking, you aren’t trying to remember whether that one recipe you loved was on Pinterest, in a cookbook, buried in your screenshots, or texted to you three years ago.
A little work now leaves more time for magic later
Holiday prep doesn’t have to mean turning the fall into one giant to-do list. The point is actually the opposite. Do a few small things while you have the time and when things are on sale, and there’s a little less to juggle when the season gets busy.
Buy the extra butter. Clean out the freezer. Sharpen the knives. Make a batch of cookie dough on a rainy afternoon and stash half of it away. Future you gets to pull fresh cookies out of the oven without dirtying a mixing bowl, and that feels a little bit like kitchen magic to me.