Baking tips on how to make perfect cookies

I think homemade cookies are one of the most fun things to bake. Nine times out of ten, I use my favorite basic cookie recipe to make different perfect cookies each time. By adding different ingredients, you create a different cookie recipe every time.

But to be fair, cookies can be quite tricky to bake. After all, they come out of the oven still soft, so you might be tempted to leave them in longer, but if you do, you end up with rock-hard cookies. Not very tasty either. Or they are still completely soft when you really wanted crispy biscuits.

After the thousands of cookies I have baked, things still go wrong sometimes, but I now know what to look out for. In this article, I have summarized all those tips for the perfect cookies. So you too will have consistently well-baked cookies.

Cookie dough

A good start is half the battle, so for best results let’s start with the dough. Without good dough, there is little chance of perfect cookies coming out of the oven any time soon. The first thing I would suggest is to use a kitchen scale instead of a measuring cup. While the latter are very convenient, the first one is way more accurate when you’re dealing with smaller quantities. So invest in a kitchen scale to get started.

Sticky or dry dough

Even if you follow a recipe to the letter, your dough may still be too sticky or too dry. This could be due to the weather conditions (very hot or humid, for example) or because you have used different ingredients to what the recipe said. If your dough feels too sticky, you can easily make it work again by adding some flour. Do this gradually, one tablespoon at a time. You don’t want too much flour either. Is your dough not sticky but is it very dry? You can remedy this by kneading it by hand, which often helps. Still very dry? Add a little butter to the dough. A teaspoon or tablespoon milk will help too.

Cooling the dough

Recipes almost always tell you to chill the dough. Please don’t be stubborn and start baking right away, but take the time to chill the dough. It will make for better cookies. They will taste better and it will improve their texture.

If you want to use a round cookie cutter or any other cookie cutter, such a hard cookie dough ball is not very easy to handle. It needs to come back to room temperature before you can roll it out. But if you’ve already flattened the dough into discs and put it in the fridge, you don’t have this problem. The dough will be easier to handle and you can start rolling almost immediately.

Read the full article on why you should start chilling your dough here.

Rolling out the dough

Once the dough has cooled, you can roll it out. That is, if you want to cut out cookies. Anyone who has ever done this knows that the dough sometimes sticks to the rolling pin. Making it almost impossible to roll out properly. You can dust the dough with all purpose flour, which definitely works well. But there is a downside to this method. The more you roll the dough (and the more flour you use) the drier the dough gets. And that will not get you the best cookies.

Fortunately, there are flour-free alternatives. Place the dough between two sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Rolled out to the right size? Remove the top sheet (when using parchment paper. Obviously if you use plastic wrap you have to remove both layers) and cut out the cookies in whatever shape you want.

Storing cookie dough

Cookie dough keeps very well. Either in the fridge or in the freezer. In both cases, wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap. You can keep it for a few days in the fridge and up to three months in the freezer! If you freeze your dough, make sure you freeze it in portions.

Don’t make one big ball of dough – make separate balls or slices. That way you can bake them straight from the freezer! Just place your slices or balls of dough on a plate in the freezer for half an hour and than store them in an airtight container or freezer bags. Next time you feel like eating chocolate chip cookies you just have to pop them in the oven!

Baking perfect cookies

With the tips above, you should be able to make a good cookie dough. Once you have made the dough, the next challenge is to bake the cookies. Believe it or not, there are a lot of things you need to pay attention to and yes also a lot of things that can go wrong.

Preventing cookies from spreading

Cookies excess spread because they contain unsalted butter, which melts in the oven. But an egg can also make your cookies lose their shape. How do you fix that? Quite simply! To chill cookie dough is the most important thing, so chill it (yes I keep repeating this important fact!) The colder the dough, the better the result.

If this doesn’t work, you need to look at the recipe more closely. It usually comes down to too much (or the type of) butter or sugar (because sugar melts). So try using less butter and/or sugar next time. If you still have a ball of dough with too much butter, you can also add some flour to change the ratios.

When are cookies ready?

Cookies come out of the oven soft, so you may be tempted to give them some extra minutes and move your cookie sheet back into the oven. But don’t worry and don’t stick your fingers in the soft cookies. Use your eyes to see if the baking time of the cookies has been sufficient. Are the edges nice and golden brown? Then I can almost guarantee you that the cookies are cooked correctly. Take them out of the oven and let them sit on the baking tray for a few minutes. You will see that they become firmer and crispy in no time at all. Place them on a cooling rack or wire rack to cool completely.

Also if you’re not using cookie cutters it can help using a cookie scoop or an ice cream scoop to place the cookies on a sheet of parchment paper. Equal size cookies makes for equally baked cookies.

Crisp cookies

Some cookies should still be a little soft, while others should be nice and crispy. Chewier cookies are easier to make than crispy ones, but if you know what to look for, it is not that complicated. For crispy cookies, it is best to use granulated white sugar in the dough, which is a hard sugar and makes for crispy cookies. Something like brown sugar will be softer and will get you more chewy cookies.

For cookies it is best to use a quality all purpose flour. It is also important that you let the dough rest in the fridge (yes, that again!) and that there is not too much moisture in the dough. Think about milk, eggs and butter. Play around with the amounts if it doesn’t work like you want it to the first time.

The baking method and baking temperature is also important. Crispy biscuits are baked for a short time at a higher temperature. And of course you want the right oven temperature (if unsure of the temperature of your oven use a separate oven thermometer to double check) to prevent uneven baking.

Storing cookies

Once you have baked the perfect cookies, you may find it hard to put them down. But chances are you’ll still want to save some when you’ve made a full tray of cookies. The best way to store your cookies is in airtight containers, which will keep them for up to 4 to 6 weeks. Don’t mix too many different types of biscuits. If you put crunchy and soft cookies in the same container, your crunchy cookies will naturally go soft.

I hope all these tips will help you to get perfect cookies out of the oven! If you’re still a little unsure? Make sure to read all the articles in the baking tips section as I will adding much more baking and cookie tips soon.