Every home cook knows it takes a long time to get butter and eggs to room temperature, which is best for baking cookies. However, leaving those ingredients out for an hour isn’t quite enough.

Ina recommends leaving the butter and eggs out overnight. This way, the butter can mix with sugar properly and become light and fluffy.

There is a super smart technique for baking cookies, and it’s all about freezing the dough for 15 minutes before making it into separate balls. This will allow any home cook to get the perfect texture for cooking.

There is also one other interesting technique that involves banging the cookie pans on the stovetop once every three minutes. This gives the cookies a crinkled quality.

Using a standard ice cream scoop to portion out cookie dough before baking is a true game-changer. It removes the guesswork and prevents home cooks from rolling uneven blobs of dough by hand.

Using the ice cream scoop results in cookies that are the same and can thus be baked evenly. It gives them a great visual appeal, and all it takes is to use a simple tool. It can also be used for measuring out muffin batter for uniformity and a professional finish.

Ina Garten recommends measuring out all ingredients in advance before baking. This step is sometimes overlooked by home cooks but can make the cooking easier overall.

She also advises double-checking everything to make sure the components are all ready and accounted for. By portioning and preparing the ingredients ahead of time, the frustration of having a key ingredient missing is removed.

It’s a good idea to keep instant coffee in the pantry for those cases where baking cookies requires some extra creativity. Ina Garten has several recipes for black-and-white cookies that include less than a teaspoon of coffee granules that can be melted into the butter and chocolate mixtures for the chocolate glaze.

This adds a lot of complexity and richness to the flavor, even though it is just a small touch of instant coffee. This can even be called an important staple for enhancing cookie glazes and icings with extra depth.

Some Swifties are so dedicated to Taylor Swift that they want her to be a part of every happy moment, including their very own weddings. But Swiftie René Hurtado went further than simply playing some of the star’s songs at her wedding; she actually got married at Swift’s Eras tour concert in Glendale, Arizona.

At first, she and her partner Max Bochman were thinking of just getting married before the concert, but then a friend suggested that they should do it during the show. The couple was convinced, and on March 18, 2023, René and Max said their vows right in the front row of Taylor Swift’s second Eras tour concert. René was wearing a beautiful white dress from Anthropologie, and Max was looking sharp in a black tuxedo from Indochino. They said their “I dos” during Taylor’s song “Seven” and had their first kiss as a married couple. The next song, “Invisible String,” was extra special for them.

René’s bestie was the one who made it all official, making the wedding feel super personal. They dropped a grand on those front-row tickets, but it was totally worth it. René said they had the best seats ever, and everyone around them was super supportive and nice as they became husband and wife.

After the Eras wedding, René shared the whole crazy story on TikTok in five parts, and people went nuts for it, watching it like crazy. In the first video, she talked about how her husband, Max, isn’t really into being the center of attention, and she had to help him chill while she was all hyped up.

Someone from Taylor Swift’s crew came up to them after the wedding and gave them a guitar pick! Plus, Taylor Swift herself noticed them and liked a video René posted about getting engaged a year and a half ago. René was so grateful, saying Taylor Swift’s music is like the soundtrack to her life, and having her as part of their wedding was a big deal.