Cookie Dough Tips & Tricks (2024)

FAQs

Cookie Dough Tips & Tricks? ›

Chilling your dough beforehand – Chilling cookie dough keeps it sturdy as it bakes into delicious cookies. This practice also heightens the flavor profile of your cookies and gives your ingredients time to meld.

"When it goes into the oven, the butter doesn't completely melt right away," she says. Youngman says chilling the dough for at least one hour before baking is crucial. An overnight sleepover in the fridge is even better.

Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.

The moisture contributed by the milk will also increase spread and hydrate more of the starches in the flour. These hydrated (gelatinized) starches support the structure of the air pocket wall, keeping the cookies from collapsing once cooled. By holding more water, they also help keep the cookies softer over time.

If the dough is chilled before baking then the cookies will be slightly more rounded, so if you want slightly flatter cookies then bake them as soon as you have mixed up the dough. But we would not recommend flattening the cookies completely as this will affect the texture.

So while resting the dough means you're another 30 or 60 minutes (or, if you're really committed, 72 hours) away from cookies, it also means those cookies will be chewier, gooier, and more delicious.

To make the recipe with a mix-and-fold method, stir together the ingredients, then perform a bowl fold three to four times in the first hour. As you make those 10 to 12 strokes, working your way around the bowl, you'll feel the dough organizing itself, strengthening, and tightening.

With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/4-inch thickness. Use more flour if the dough seems too sticky. The rolled-out dough can be any shape, as long as it is evenly 1/4-inch thick.

How long should sugar cookie dough chill before rolling? ›

→ Follow this tip: Chill sugar cookie dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, or in the freezer for 15 minutes. The dough will be so much easier to work with! It will roll out nicely, and if you're making cut-outs, chilled dough will help you get clean, sharp edges.

As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes).

Chilling cookie dough makes the cookies much more flavorful, with that blissful caramelized butterscotch flavor, and it makes them thicker, chewier, and browner.

Overmixing the dough: Overmixing can lead to tough and dense cookies. It's essential to mix the ingredients just until they come together to avoid developing too much gluten.

The best cookies have layers of texture. A slightly crisp outer shell that holds up to some heat with an inner core that's soft and chewy.

Baking Powder. The type of leavening you use in your cookies doesn't just help them rise while baking, it affects their texture and structure too. Baking soda in cookies yields a denser cookie with craggy tops, while baking powder causes cookies to rise higher during baking for a cakier texture.

The science is simple: According to the flour authorities over at Bob's Red Mill, cornstarch can help “soften the rigid proteins of the flour, resulting in a light and chewy dessert.” “The cornstarch complements the flour in absorbing the liquids, but won't develop gluten structure like the flour will,” stresses ...

Too much flour causes the dough to become dry and crumbly, which prevents it from flattening out during baking. As a result, your cookies will stay in their original shape instead of spreading out into nice circles.