I have a TON of cookies to do this week. I made dough this morning, but I'm wondering what would be the best way to prepare:

Roll out my dough between parchment paper, then freeze the sheets, then cut and bake the cookies as needed?

OR

Go ahead and bake the cookies, freeze them, and then pull them out of the freezer and decorate as needed?

I have 2 doz. beachballs due 9 a.m. Friday, 4 doz. baseballs by noon Friday and 3 doz. crawfish cookies by noon Saturday.

I'd love some help with the timeline. Thanks!

I have baked them in the past then froze them till i needed to decorate them. HTH

I wouldnt freeze the sheets of frozen dough. it may make it stick and difficult to reroll out after you cut the 1st bactch out. you could cut out the shapes and freeze those if you want the cookies to be fresh baked. Or It wont hurt anything either to freeze them after they are baked, noone has to know the wiser!

I do very large orders sometimes. Up to 400. I find it easiest to bake then freeze. then I get the baking part done and all thats left to do is decorate and package.

So, if I bake them, then freeze them, how long should I plan on thawing them before I decorate with royal icing to avoid any condensation problems?

Thank you CC for saving my butt -- again!

I have always baked then froze till I needed them and no one ever had a bad thing to say!

If you lay your cookies out in a single layer it doesn't take long to thaw, maybe half an hour or so. I usually get my icings colored and bagged and ready to go. By the time that's done the cookies are thawed.

I would roll out, cut out the shapes, freeze the shapes, and then bake when needed. I would be afraid the baked and frozen cookies would go stale on me.