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The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

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Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#11

Post by samizdis »

rvense wrote: post #6
samizdis wrote: post #4

Pragmatically speaking, I'd advocate cutting square cookies and embossing/icing seasonal designs/motifs on the top.

But... is it really Christmas if the kids don't get into fights over who gets the reindeer-shaped cookie cutter, and who gets the star? And this research is from a Danish university, Danish Christmas cookies don't have icing. We only get to express ourselves through the shape.

You raise some serious points, which I shall try to address; my limited domain expertise notwithstanding.

> if the kids don't get into fights over who gets the reindeer-shaped cookie cutter, and who gets the star?

This, in comparable situations I have witnessed, should not be a problem. The kids should be able to fight quite easily over nuances such as depth of icing, area of icing, colour of icing etc. And in the case of embossed designs, who gets the star motif and who gets the reindeer. Fighting among children is guaranteed to be preserved at current levels under my proposed system; it doesn't upset the status quo.

> Danish Christmas cookies don't have icing. We only get to express ourselves through the shape.

This is perplexing. Perhaps a national education programme might be initiated - using Danish influencers on YouTube, promoting the use of icing and showing how it is made. (You'd start with water icing and move up to royal icing etc.)

Furthermore, one might use this cookie dilemma ("Danish cookies don't have icing") as a metaphor to address other fixed biases in the Danish psyche that might benefit from frank and open discussion.

Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#12

Post by chapium »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

This is amusing but IRL you'd just roll up the extra dough and cut more cookies out of it until you can only get one cookie, then eat the rest of the dough. This is your reward.

The child in me would just try to make an extra large cookie at the end.

Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#13

Post by hinkley »

What does rectangle backing have to do with cutting cookies? Has the author ever rolled dough in their life?

Has anyone, ever, rolled dough into a perfect rectangle, let alone a square? Dough comes out in an ellipse, or a rounded rectangle at best. You can’t roll 90° corners. And if you could, the amount of time needed to roll the dough again is the least taxing part of your day, so it’s moot anyway.

If your packing algorithm involves corners, it’s a nonstarter for running the experiment in reverse. Or at the very least, with dough.

Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#14

Post by hinkley »

forinti wrote: post #3

Once a shoe company in the South of Brazil (Novo Hamburgo or maybe São Leopoldo) had an employee who was long due retirement and they wanted to put some software in place to do his job, which was to cup up leather in the most efficient manner possible. Try as they might, they never reached this man's efficiency.

People studying the traveling salesman problem have long known that a human being can get alarmingly close to an optimal route in minutes. The best answer can take days, weeks, heat death of the universe, but some teenager can get around 95% on the first try.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how humans do these approximations, but honestly I think we could spend a lot more time looking at it.

Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#16

Post by jccalhoun »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

This is amusing but IRL you'd just roll up the extra dough and cut more cookies out of it until you can only get one cookie, then eat the rest of the dough. This is your reward.

Agreed. minimizing waste is an important goal but this is a bad example.

Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#17

Post by sandworm101 »

hinkley wrote: post #13

What does rectangle backing have to do with cutting cookies? Has the author ever rolled dough in their life? Has anyone, ever, rolled dough into a perfect rectangle, let alone a square? Dough comes out in an ellipse, or a rounded rectangle at best. You can’t roll 90° corners. And if you could, the amount of time needed to roll the dough again is the least taxing part of your day, so it’s moot anyway. If your packing…

Roll the dough over shallow rectangular moulds. I did this over triangular molds when making croissant rolls. Rolling the dough over the thin mold ensures an even thickness, rather than cutting shapes out of an uneven hand-rolled blob.

Re: The ever-elusive riddle: What's the best way to cut Christmas cookies?

#18

Post by mauvehaus »

hinkley wrote: post #13

What does rectangle backing have to do with cutting cookies? Has the author ever rolled dough in their life? Has anyone, ever, rolled dough into a perfect rectangle, let alone a square? Dough comes out in an ellipse, or a rounded rectangle at best. You can’t roll 90° corners. And if you could, the amount of time needed to roll the dough again is the least taxing part of your day, so it’s moot anyway. If your packing…

Worked at Cinnabon many years ago: you can roll out dough to a rounded rectangle pretty easily. The trick is to work diagonally corner to corner. The radiused bits get cut off with the ends of the rolled, uh, "log" of cinnamon rolls before you cut the finished rolls off of the log.

There's some waste but they're shooting for consistent rolls. A home baker making cookies would optimize differently.

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