Buzz
December marks the ultimate cookie-baking season, where my oven works overtime. With countless cookies in different shapes and textures, my most indispensable tool isn’t a stand mixer or parchment paper—it’s a fish spatula.
The Underrated Tool Your Cookies Deserve: A Fish Spatula
Freshly baked cookies are soft, delicate, and melt-in-your-mouth delicious. But in their warm, just-out-of-the-oven state, they’re also at their most fragile. With fats and sugars still molten and chocolate chunks forming gooey puddles, handling them requires the right tool—it’s a risky business.
A standard plastic spatula has a thick, blunt edge—if you’ve ever tried to lift a warm gingerbread figure only to see its side get smooshed, you know the disappointment. And that’s a sturdy cookie. Some, like tuiles and lace cookies, are incredibly delicate, while others, like spritz cookies or Santa heads, demand precision.
Fish spatulas glide effortlessly under even the thinnest cookies. Designed to lift delicate fish fillets, a metal fish spatula boasts a razor-thin, tapered, and angled edge. Its extended length is another advantage—most spatulas have short heads meant for flipping burgers, but when dealing with a tall gingerbread man, a fish spatula’s five or six inches of lifting space means you can safely transport multiple small cookies or a single, intricate menorah cookie in one go.
Their nearly flat design is another win: Lifting cookies from a baking sheet doesn’t require the steep angle of a frying pan spatula. A fish spatula’s slight offset and flexible metal construction make it comfortably ergonomic, allowing for smooth, controlled movements—no awkward shoulder-cranking required when transferring your delicate treats to the cooling rack.
This time of year, a fish spatula is an essential tool—but let’s be real, your holiday cookies will still taste amazing even if they spread into one giant rectangle. (Luckily, a fish spatula can handle that, too.)
