- That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. …
- Use melted butter for a denser, chewier cookie.
- Play with the liquid ratio in your recipe. …
- Use all-purpose or bread flour.
- Increase the sugar content slightly.
Flour. Depending on its ratio to other ingredients in the dough, flour
makes cookies chewy or crisp or crumbly
. In dry cookie dough, like shortbread, a high proportion of flour to the small amount of liquid in the butter produces a tender, crumbly texture.
Does flour Help Cookies rise?
Much like in bread,
flour helps the cookie to rise
(as well as keep certain shapes). This means that more flour will result in more rise, which is not always optimal if you want light, crisp cookies. On the other hand, low amounts of flour will commonly result in crisp, thin cookies.
6.
Use Fresh Baking Soda
. Baking soda is a leavening agent, which means that it causes baked goods to rise. Little bubbles of carbon dioxide are released, making air pockets that create a light texture.
Flour adds fluff and texture to the cookies
. Adding too little flour can cause cookies to be flat, greasy and crispy. Baking soda helps cookies spread outward and upward while cooking. Adding too little can cause flat, lumpy cookies.
For most cookies,
there’s enough fat in the dough to keep them from sticking to your baking sheets
—no greasing required. … If you grease the pans unnecessarily, the dough will flatten too much as it bakes. Related, reusing baking sheets for multiple batches of cookies can be another cause of flat cookies.
Underbaked cookies
are the secret to softness. Using cornstarch in the dough is another secret to softness, as well as the secret to thickness. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. Adding an extra egg yolk increases chewiness.
Why are my cookies tough? The most common reason that cookies are tough is
that the cookie dough was mixed too much
. When flour is mixed into the dough, gluten begins to form. Gluten helps hold baked goods together, but too much gluten can lead to tough cookies.
Your Cookies Are Lacking Moisture
We have crackers for a reason.
Cookies should never be hard and dry
. Seriously, ew. This can result from a number of factors, but an easy fix for this scenario is adding more brown sugar (2 tablespoons is enough to make a difference).
That, or the dough wasn’t cool enough before baking.
Warm cookie dough or excess butter will cause the cookies to spread too much
, baking quickly on the outside but remaining raw in the middle. Next time, chill your cookies in the fridge for 10 minutes before you bake them. If the problem persists, use less butter.
This is tricky because we often use flour to prepare our surfaces when rolling out sugar cookies, but having too much flour can mean
your cookie will be dry and crumble easily
. If your cookies spread it maybe be because there was not enough flour (and even too much butter).
Using extra flour with a ratio of 1.3 to 1 or higher with your butter will result in cookies that barely spread at all when baked. The cookies will be thicker than usual. The middle of the cookies will remain dense and dough-like, even when they are fully cooked. Using too much flour will
result in a dry cookie
.
What happens if you add too much flour?
Too much flour and not enough water can
cause crumbly bread
– people often do this if the dough is too sticky and they add more flour rather than kneading through it.
Basically, cookies made with butter spread more and are flatter and crisper if baked long enough. However, they are
more flavorful than cookies
made with shortening. Cookies made with shortening bake up taller and are more tender, but aren’t as flavorful.
Make sure
cookies cool completely
before storing. Store them at room temperature in an air-tight container, like Tupperware. Store different flavors separately. Over time, strongly flavored cookies like molasses or mint will seep into other cookies, so if possible store each flavor in its own container.
1. Unless you want cakey cookies,
avoid using baking powder
: The cookies made with both the single- and double-acting baking powders were just too darn cakey. 2. Baking soda helps cookies spread more than baking powder.
