Biscuits they're often the first thing we learn to bake: they're simple, fun and comforting. But just because they're straight, that doesn't mean they're always right. Are you plagued by cakey cookies, thin cookies, hard cookies, or more disturbing variations? Here are our tips to make sure you create your best cookies, every time.
1) Weigh, don't grind your flour
A little too much flour can be the difference between a dry, cakey cookie and a soft, chewy cookie. And if you are weighing your flour by volume (ie with measuring cups), then you are most likely adding too much flour.
That's because measuring flour by volume is wildly inconsistent: It all depends on how densely the flour is packed into the cup. If the flour is more condensed, one cup can hold up to 160g of flour. If you smooth it out and scoop it out with a spoon, as we recommend, one cup will hold about 120g.
But if you weigh your flour with a DEGREES? You will always get exactly 120g of flour per cup, exactly as our Test Kitchen (or whoever developed your recipe) intended. Which translates into perfectly textured cookies, be it chewy chocolate chip cookies or crumbly, with butter short bread.
2) Make sure your butter is at the right temperature
Here is a common line of ingredients in cookie recipes: 8 tablespoons (113 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature.
Don't ignore the last three words! Butter needs to be just the right temperature for icing (more on that below), which means it needs to be right in the Goldilocks zone—not too hot and soft, and not too cold and hard.
But what exactly does room temperature mean? You should be able to press a dent in the butter with one finger, as if you were pressing it into clay. The butter should not be so warm as to be greasy; it should still be slightly cool, with a little resistance when pressed.
The best way to get your butter to room temperature is to leave it on the counter for a few hours. But if you need to get the butter quickly at room temperature? We tested tons of different methods to determine the best.
Photography by Mark Weinberg; food styling by Liz Neily
3) Cream correctly
Typically, one of the first steps when making cookie dough is to cream butter and sugar together. This process aerates the mixture – the hard sugar crystals cut through the butter at room temperature, creating tiny air pockets that help the cookie rise when it bakes.
If you don't cream the butter and sugar long enough, it will still be thick and dense, which can result in grainy cookies that don't rise or spread. Meanwhile, if you cream the butter and sugar for too long, it will introduce too much air, causing your cookies to become too puffy and cakey while baking.
Proper creaming should take about four minutes on medium speed in a mixer, until the mixture is pale and fluffy. See how it's done:
4) Do not substitute granulated sugar for brown sugar
Sugar is sugar, right? No! Brown sugar is granulated white sugar with added molasses – up to 10% molasses, by weight. This translates into some major changes in your cookie baking.
In addition to adding a caramelized flavor and golden color to cookies, brown sugar is acidic and lowers the pH—which is important for activating baking soda, a leavening agent typically called for in recipes that use brown sugar. (Low pH brown sugar + high pH baking soda = drying reaction.) Using granulated sugar instead would require tweaking the acid and sourness levels to achieve the same reaction. Additionally, if you use white sugar instead of brown sugar, your cookies may spread less (or more, depending on the other ingredients in the recipe).
The good news: If you don't have brown sugar, you can make your own. Here's how.
5) Don't skip (or cut!) the cooldown
Chilling cookie dough can be annoying—do you really want to wait? longer for freshly baked cookies? But no matter how tempted you are to skip this step, don't. It's essential for many reasons: Chilled cookie dough controls spreadability, concentrates flavor, and creates cookies with a chewy/fresh quality (instead of soft/doughy). Skipping or shortening this cooling can result in thinner cookies with less browning and a milder flavor. So wait the extra 30 minutes – it's worth it.
Learn more in our previous post: Chilled Cookie Dough: Does It Make a Difference?
Photography by Danielle Sykes; food styling by Liz Neily
6) Make collection seamless
For a uniform look and an even, circular shape on all your cookies, use a spoonfuls of cookies to separate the dough. You can choose your favorite size – small, mediumOR big — then chop and toss in half the time it takes to do so with a spoon.
And a bonus tip: if your cookies still turn out a little curled, you can use a glass to turn them into perfect circles. When the baked cookies are fresh out of the oven and still hot, take a wide-mouthed glass and invert it to cover the cookie. Move the glass in a circle, rounding the edges of the cookie as you do so to smooth it into an even shape.
7) Line your pan the right way
It's how you place your pan that matters, and we've made the baking to prove it. In an experiment testing five different pan coating methods against each other, cookbook author Jesse Szewczyk found that cookie spreads varied greatly depending on how the pan was lined. A greased baking sheet caused ugly dark bottoms and burnt edges, while an ungreased, unlined baking sheet put the cookies at risk of sticking. Baking on aluminum foil caused the cookies to spread too much and become thin and crispy.
When setting up your cookie sheet, we recommend two methods. A good and safe bet is to use Parchment paper. The cookies spread just enough while maintaining a nice domed center. For even more consistent results, bake in one non-stick mattress it resulted in perfectly shaped cookies that spread just the right amount.
Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Liz Neily
8) Give your cookies space
Cookies tend to spread more than you think they will. So as much as you might want to knock out a whole batch of dough at once, resist the urge to pile them on Cooking sheet. Instead, leave a few inches between each ball of dough. Otherwise, the cookies can spread and bump into each other, turning them into messy shapes and ruining the contrast between the crunchy edges and chewy centers.
And for extra insurance, follow the next tip, then space files based on what you learn there…
9) Bake a batch of test cookies
Before you pop all of your dough in the oven and hope for the best, bake one or two cookie testing before grinding and baking the whole batch. This way you can make a complete initial assessment of:
- How spreadable (or not) are cookies?
- What size are they (too big, too small, okay)?
- How do they taste (do they need a little more salt, or cinnamon)?
- What is their texture (crunchy, crunchy, chewy, soft)?
- Do the baking times given for your oven work (are they burnt, or have they gone bad)?
- Does it matter if you cool the cookies in a pan versus a rack?
Adjust accordingly before baking the full batch to ensure your best baking.
Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne
10) Don't overdo it
It's always better to err on the side of underbaking your cookies rather than overbaking them. Typically, the cookies should still look a little raw when you take them out of the oven – this is because they will continue to bake on the hot pan and will set and harden as they cool.
You want to remove your cookies from the oven once they are set in the middle, with golden brown edges. If you are not sure what the “set” looks like, keep an eye on their brightness. If the dough is shiny as it bakes (thanks to the butter or other fat in it), that shine will diminish significantly or disappear once the cookies are set. Once they reach that stage, remove them from the oven. Even if they don't feel firm yet, they will continue to harden and harden as they cool.
Ready to bake your best cookies yet? Find your next recipe with our collection of Classic cookies.
Cover picture (Chocolate Sour Dough Cookies) and food styling by Liz Neily.
