Drying Cookies in the Oven

I have a gas oven and the lowest temp is about 150 as Julia's oven. I have read where others suggest to use the oven light and that puts off enough heat to dry the cookies, but mine does not have a light. I have never had success with the oven drying method. I got cookies where the icing ran off the cookie! Butter bleed. as someone else mentioned before, was also a problem.

Sometime I find my house is too cold and the cookies do not dry, even over night, in the winter. My house is really old and poorly insulated. I started last year by placing a heater near the cookies, but in front of my fan. The fan blows the hot air over the cookies and this works like a charm! I have found that I cannot have the heater too high or too close as the same problems occur as with the oven method. I have also found that the colors will bleed if the heater is too high or too close. This would not be good for the summer, as it heats up the entire room! I don't get to procrastinate in the summer, as much.

Hello! I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to say that placing the flooded cookies in an unlit oven with the light on worked like a charm!!!!! I too have the no dehydrator and going through a horrible humid weather issue. Had to dump a whole batch that never dried and start over. I scanned this blog looking for a work around and found the suggestion by Maddy D.  As I finished decorating each cookie (did tie-dye cookies) I put it onto cookie sheets I'd placed in the oven and left them there. When I was completely finished  decorating the whole batch (about 3 hours), I propped the door open slightly and left them in there overnight. I probably didn't need to keep the door open, but I did. It's not ideal, but until the dehydrator, worked great! Thanks for mentioning this!

Lisa T posted:

Hello! I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to say that placing the flooded cookies in an unlit oven with the light on worked like a charm!!!!! I too have the no dehydrator and going through a horrible humid weather issue. Had to dump a whole batch that never dried and start over. I scanned this blog looking for a work around and found the suggestion by Maddy D.  As I finished decorating each cookie (did tie-dye cookies) I put it onto cookie sheets I'd placed in the oven and left them there. When I was completely finished  decorating the whole batch (about 3 hours), I propped the door open slightly and left them in there overnight. I probably didn't need to keep the door open, but I did. It's not ideal, but until the dehydrator, worked great! Thanks for mentioning this!

 

Good news!

I can confirm that using the oven's broiler setting does NOT work  

Well, I hope it’s not bad manners to highjack this post. I was about to post a very similar question so maybe I’ll just post it here as it has to do with drying cookies in a dehydrator and/or oven.

I made some sugar cookies and used the 5 second dip method - which means there was a lot more water and the icing was really runny. So I figured I’d try to dry them quickly. I went to my oven, which, on Convection or just regular Bake, only goes as low as 110F so I decided to try my dehydrator for the 1st time.

The lowest temp available is 100F.  So I put them in for 2 hours … checked them and they had this weird discoloration … so I left them in for another 2 hours … same discoloration … left them in for another 4 hours.  ha ha ha … OBVIOUSLY I have no idea what I am doing, LOL. Anyway, my cookies, no matter how long I left them in, took on this weird discoloration and even now, 3 days later, this is how they look.

Would anyone have any idea why this happened please? How long should I be leaving my cookies in the dehydrator?  Thanks so much in advance.

@Sandy_S, Thanks for the photos and for posting under this very related thread. You have to be SUPER careful about leaving cookies IN the dehydrator, especially that long. All sorts of stuff can happen if they overheat. On smaller cookies, I've had the icing puff up and crack; I've also had ripples blown into icing that evidently was too thin; I've also had the icing speckle and mottle even after coming out of the dehydrator. So now, I dry on a tray IN FRONT of my open dehydrator, about 12 inches away from the door, so it's acting more like a fan. I typically dry cookies this way for no longer than one hour, but I also start with icing as thick as it can be to smoothly flood. My icing always sets more uniformly if on the thicker side. In your case, it looks like your cookies got too hot and some of the fat from the cookie bled into the icing.

@Julia M. Usher posted:

@Sandy_S, Thanks for the photos and for posting under this very related thread. You have to be SUPER careful about leaving cookies IN the dehydrator, especially that long. All sorts of stuff can happen if they overheat. On smaller cookies, I've had the icing puff up and crack; I've also had ripples blown into icing that evidently was too thin; I've also had the icing speckle and mottle even after coming out of the dehydrator. So now, I dry on a tray IN FRONT of my open dehydrator, about 12 inches away from the door, so it's acting more like a fan. I typically dry cookies this way for no longer than one hour, but I also start with icing as thick as it can be to smoothly flood. My icing always sets more uniformly if on the thicker side. In your case, it looks like your cookies got too hot and some of the fat from the cookie bled into the icing.

Thanks so much for the very helpful info, Julia. If I need to use the dehydrator again I will perhaps put the cookies on the top shelf and maybe even leave the lid a bit askew so the cookies will dry more slowly and less warm. So from what I’m reading, am I correct to believe that they shouldn’t have to be in there for more than an hour?

Thanks again for your reply. I know how busy you are so I truly appreciate you.

@Sandy_S posted:

Thanks so much for the very helpful info, Julia. If I need to use the dehydrator again I will perhaps put the cookies on the top shelf and maybe even leave the lid a bit askew so the cookies will dry more slowly and less warm. So from what I’m reading, am I correct to believe that they shouldn’t have to be in there for more than an hour?

Thanks again for your reply. I know how busy you are so I truly appreciate you.

I don't even put mine IN the dehydrator; I put them IN FRONT of it for about an hour - sometimes less, sometimes more per the notes below. IN the dehydrator for an hour could be way too long from some things. Remember, there's no one exact perfect time, as drying time is a function of many things: (1) what you are trying to achieve (i.e., fully dry all the way through or just enough to create a shell on the icing to move onto the next decorating step); (2) how loose the icing was to start; (3) how big a patch of icing you're trying to dry; (4) how accurate the temperature gauge is on your device; (5) how your dehydrator is configured (mine is side-loading with the fan/heat source at the back so all trays heat relatively uniformly; yours looks to be top-loading so the pieces closest to the heat source, which I assume is at the bottom, are going to dry faster); etc.

Again, my best recommendation (as with everything) is to start doing some controlled experiments to figure out what works best for your application and with your particular equipment. I rarely dry the icing all the way through; just enough to make sure the top layer is set and stable and unlikely to sink when moved away from the dehydrator.

Perhaps also consider that the bleed may be caused by too much red gel colour in your royal and not your dehydrator at all. This is common with red. Also worth noting is that dehydrators with a motor at the bottom of the trays will never give as good a finish as one with the motor at the back. This is because the warm air blows across the icing and not towards the underside of the cookie. Hope this helps

@Carla @ SweetWorks posted:

Perhaps also consider that the bleed may be caused by too much red gel colour in your royal and not your dehydrator at all. This is common with red. Also worth noting is that dehydrators with a motor at the bottom of the trays will never give as good a finish as one with the motor at the back. This is because the warm air blows across the icing and not towards the underside of the cookie. Hope this helps

I agree completely with all you said - especially the latter about side-loading dehydrators with motors at back. I hate top-loading dehydrators for the reason you mentioned and also because you're more likely to ding cookies when unstacking and re-stacking trays.

@Carla @ SweetWorks posted:

Perhaps also consider that the bleed may be caused by too much red gel colour in your royal and not your dehydrator at all. This is common with red. Also worth noting is that dehydrators with a motor at the bottom of the trays will never give as good a finish as one with the motor at the back. This is because the warm air blows across the icing and not towards the underside of the cookie. Hope this helps

Yes, Carla, I totally agree too. I will take all of the great advice from this post and keep it all in mind the next time I need to dry my cookies quickly. Thanks again for you response; it was very helpful.

@Julia M. Usher posted:

I don't even put mine IN the dehydrator; I put them IN FRONT of it for about an hour - sometimes less, sometimes more per the notes below. IN the dehydrator for an hour could be way too long from some things. Remember, there's no one exact perfect time, as drying time is a function of many things: (1) what you are trying to achieve (i.e., fully dry all the way through or just enough to create a shell on the icing to move onto the next decorating step); (2) how loose the icing was to start; (3) how big a patch of icing you're trying to dry; (4) how accurate the temperature gauge is on your device; (5) how your dehydrator is configured (mine is side-loading with the fan/heat source at the back so all trays heat relatively uniformly; yours looks to be top-loading so the pieces closest to the heat source, which I assume is at the bottom, are going to dry faster); etc.

Again, my best recommendation (as with everything) is to start doing some controlled experiments to figure out what works best for your application and with your particular equipment. I rarely dry the icing all the way through; just enough to make sure the top layer is set and stable and unlikely to sink when moved away from the dehydrator.

Wow! Thanks so much, Julia. You sure are awesome to always take so much time to write such detailed and helpful responses. It is obvious that you always want to cover all of the bases and share as much of your knowledge as possible. This has not escaped me and I just want you to know how grateful I am. So much to consider here and I will refer back to this thread if I continue to run into problems.

Thanks again. ❤️

@Sandy_S posted:

Wow! Thanks so much, Julia. You sure are awesome to always take so much time to write such detailed and helpful responses. It is obvious that you always want to cover all of the bases and share as much of your knowledge as possible. This has not escaped me and I just want you to know how grateful I am. So much to consider here and I will refer back to this thread if I continue to run into problems.

Thanks again. ❤️

You're very welcome! Love your latest fan cookie, BTW!

I made sugar cookies and am planning on using sugar paper and my edible printer to put a picture on each cookie then piping a decorative border around each picture. I have a dehydrator, a convection oven and a freeze dryer will any of these work to dry them faster?

@Sherry Scott posted:

I made sugar cookies and am planning on using sugar paper and my edible printer to put a picture on each cookie then piping a decorative border around each picture. I have a dehydrator, a convection oven and a freeze dryer will any of these work to dry them faster?

Please see my few comments above. In short, I much prefer drying in front of my dehydrator (an oven is risky, as your oven temperature may run too high). I don't know how a freeze-drier works, so can't comment on that, but it isn't something I've heard anyone use to dry cookies.