Use
a silicone baking mat or parchment paper
. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.
Use
a silicone baking mat or parchment paper
. Coating your baking sheet with nonstick spray or butter creates an overly greasy foundation, causing the cookies to spread. I always recommend a silicone baking mat because they grip onto the bottom of your cookie dough, preventing the cookies from spreading too much.
Having said all that, the main reason cookies spread is that
the oven isn't hot enough
. It's the heat that sets the cookies, and putting cookies into a too-cool oven means the butter will melt before the cookies have a chance to set. … By the way, butter isn't the only thing that melts when you bake it. Sugar does, too.
Baking chilled cookie-dough on parchment paper
is what keeps the cookies from spreading in the oven so they hold their shape. Rimless cookie sheets provide the best even baking. If you don't have one, turn over a regular cookie sheet and use the bottom.
Which Of The Following Can Be Responsible For Cookies That Spread Too Much During Baking? In cookies, the following factors increase spread:
heavily buttered pans, high sugar content, high liquid content, and high oven temperature
.
- Refrigerate the cookie dough. …
- Butter vs. …
- Don't use margarine. …
- Don't overbeat the dough. …
- If you're rolling the cookie dough, form the dough balls tall instead of perfectly round. …
- Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. …
- Room temperature pans.
- 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.
Cornstarch is one of the most versatile starches there is. … When added to cake, cookie and shortbread recipes, cornstarch
helps create a crumbly and tender dessert-like texture
. Commercially, cornstarch is often used as an anti-caking agent.
When cookies aren't spreading, it means that there's too much dry ingredient (flour) soaking up all the liquid. … If you're in the middle of baking a batch and the cookies still aren't spreading, remove them from the oven, and
use a spoon to slightly flatten them out before
returning them to the oven.
But for chocolate chip cookies, you'
d use baking soda because it allows the dough to spread
, and you get thinner, crisp edges with a tender center. … The gas bubbles are trapped by the starch in the batter or dough and cause the baked good to expand while in the oven.
Too much flour will make your cookies dry and crumbly.
Too much sugar and butter can make sugar cookies spread
and lose their shape when baked. This one requires a little patience because once you roll out your dough, you are ready to bake. Be patient and bake your cookies when the dough is really cold.
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.
Most cookie recipes are carefully formulated to contain just the right amount of
fat/flour ratio
so they spread out in the oven. … If you add too much flour, your cookies won't spread as much. If your cookies have more brown sugar than white sugar, they won't spread as much. It's a careful balance.
How: Add a teaspoon or two of cornstarch (up to a tablespoon if you want!) into your dry ingredients. Why This Works:
Cornstarch binds with the liquids in your dough
, so this makes your cookies spread less. It will also help them be soft and tender!
Granulated sugar
Using granulated white sugar will result in a flatter, crispier and lighter-colored cookie. Granulated sugar is hygroscopic, so it attracts and absorbs the liquid in the dough.
If a baker wants to decrease the spread of his cookies, but doesn't want to make them any less sweet, he can:
Switch from granulated to confectioner's sugar in his formula
. Which of the following is NOT a basic cookie mixing method?
In most baked goods,
baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
acts as a rising agent, but in cookies it's much more important for encouraging browning. It does so by neutralizing acidic ingredients in dough, such as brown sugar, honey, vanilla, and butter, which would normally inhibit browning.
When cookies don't spread in the oven, it's either
because the dough was too dry or too cold
. Dry dough doesn't have enough moisture or fat in it to spread out, so it sets in that shape. Dough that's too cold will start to firm up before the butter has a chance to melt completely.
If your cookies are flat, brown and crispy, that means you need
to add flour to your dough for the next batch
. … Though the culprit is usually a flour deficit, butter could also be to blame for this problem. Adding too soft or slightly melted butter to the dough can also result in flat cookies.
“Most people think the butter should be so soft that it's broken down, but the most important thing is that you want a little bit of give to the butter.” If you want to get technical, she says the precise temperature should be
between 63 and 68 degrees
— where it's cool to touch, but your finger can leave an indent.
If your baking soda or baking powder is expired, your cookies won't develop as they are supposed to – causing them not to rise but simply to
spread across your oven tray
. It's a good idea to regularly replace your raising agents as they are key to baked goods rising as they should when baked.
The protein in the yolk heats up and turns
into a “gel-like substance,” which allows for a super soft texture once fully baked. The more eggs you add, the more chewy and almost cake-like your cookie will be.
- 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.
Using
lower-moisture sugar (granulated) and fat (vegetable shortening)
, plus a longer, slower bake than normal, produces light, crunchy cookies. That said, using a combination of butter and vegetable shortening (as in the original recipe), or even using all butter, will make an acceptably crunchy chocolate chip cookie.
Lining a baking sheet when making cookies: Not only will the
parchment help cookies bake more evenly
, the non-stick quality also helps prevent them from cracking or breaking when lifting them off the sheet.
For scooped cookies like oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies, I like to
chill the dough overnight
. The texture is improved, the cold dough helps keep my cookies thicker as they bake, and the caramel notes in the cookies are enhanced. I definitely recommend a 24-hour chill for many scooped cookie recipes.
Baking powder simply
adds carbon dioxide to the equation
, providing a more forceful pressure that encourages a dough to spread up and out. Without the well-developed elasticity of a bread dough, the strands of gluten in cookies would sooner snap than stretch, cracking along the surface.
Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies
, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.
Why would you double-pan a batch of cookies?
To prevent burning the bottoms of the cookies
. … The following factors all increase spread in cookies: heavily greased pans, high sugar content, high liquid content, high oven temperature.
It'll take ages before your dough becomes flat. What you want to do instead is to take your dough out on the surface, shape it with your hands, flattening it by
pressing your rolling pin
into it until it flattens out to the shape you're looking for.
Cream of tartar helps
stabilize whipped egg whites
, prevents sugar from crystallizing and acts as a leavening agent for baked goods.
Cookie temperatures fluctuate, with some recipes as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and a few as high as 425 degrees Fahrenheit, but most recipes land on
375 or 350
to evenly bake the entirety of the cookie.
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.
Do not put anything on your cookies before baking
! If you want to add colored sugar to the cookies, then after the cookies are baked and fully cooled, spread either royal icing or edible baking glue to the tops, then dip them in sugar.
The ideal thickness to roll out your sugar cookie dough is
about 1/4′′
–that way, they'll be tough enough to be handled and decorated, but thin enough to stay a little crunchy.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Among the most popular of all cookie types, the chocolate chip cookie's invention was a happy accident.
- 1 – Refrigerate Your Cookie Dough. …
- 2 – Use Room-Temperature Butter. …
- 3 – Use the Correct Fat. …
- 4 – Focus on Your Mixing Technique. …
- 5 – Add Less Granulated Sugar. …
- 6 – Add More Flour. …
- 7 – Use Bleached Flour. …
- 8 – Check Your Rising Agent.
Baking powder and baking soda are what we call leavening agents. They help make your baked goods rise. If they are
too old, they may have become inactive
. Inactive = they won't do squat for your cookies!
What are the primary causes of this? The steam and other hot gasses that were puffing the cookies up either escapes or condenses.
Without heat to create more steam
, the cookies deflate. You get exactly the same effect with bread, quiches, and other baked goods.
For perfectly round cookies, place
a circular cookie cutter that's a bit larger than the size of the cookies over each cookie and swirl it around to shape the cookie into a perfect circle
. This has to be done immediately after taking the cookies out of the oven, while the cookies are still hot and pliable.
