9 Tips to Remember
- Use Real Butter and Keep It Cool. The low melting point of butter may be what makes your cookies flat.
- Use Shortening.
- Chill Dough Twice.
- Use Parchment Paper or a Silicone Liner.
- Measure Precisely.
- Use Fresh Baking Soda.
- Use Optional Add-Ins.
- Buy an Oven Thermometer.
The Problem: Your Oven Is Too Hot
If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here’s what’s happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure.
(Exactly) How to Make Fluffy Cookies: 11 Genius Tips for Puffy…
- Make Sure Your Baking Soda and Baking Powder aren’t Expired.
- Use Baking Powder instead of Baking Soda.
- Roll Your Dough Balls into Cylinders.
- Chill the Dough.
- Use a Silicone Mat, not a Greased Baking Sheet.
- Add another Egg Yolk.
Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder.
Placing the cookie dough between two sheets of parchment paper before rolling it out will prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. Chilling the dough a second time before removing the cut-out cookies from the bottom layer of parchment paper keeps the shapes in tact while they are moved to the cookie sheet.
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.
Not Enough Flour
If your cookies are flat, brown, crispy, and possibly even a bit lacy around the edges, that means you need to add flour to your dough for the next batch. Our cookies were brittle and greasy and cooked much faster than the other dough balls on the sheet.
Carbon dioxide gas and water vapor form the bubbles which make cookies rise. Rising doesn’t just make cookies taller. It also opens up space to keep the cookie from becoming too dense. Salt slows down the decomposition of baking soda, so the bubbles don’t get too big.
Generally for 1 or 2-inch-deep pans, you will fill them 1/2 full of batter. For pans that are 3 or 4-inch-deep, the batter needs to be about 2/3 full.
While baking soda will create a coarse, chewy cookie texture, baking powder will produce a light, fine cookie texture. To achieve the best cookie results, use a double-acting baking powder as a substitute.
Flour. Most cookie recipes call for all-purpose or pastry flour. If you use bread flour with its high gluten protein content, or cake flour, which is high in starch, you’ll end up with cookies that tend to spread less when you bake them.
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.
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.
Why Are My Cookies Flat? Mistake: When cookies turn out flat, the bad guy is often butter that is too soft or even melted. This makes cookies spread. The other culprit is too little flour—don’t hold back and make sure you master measuring.
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.
It holds its shape, and one major trick is that after you make your dough, you’ll roll it out, cut out your cookie shapes, and then put them on a lined baking sheet and only then PUT THEM IN THE FREEZER for 10 minutes, then straight into the oven after.
Baking soda is generally about three times stronger than baking powder, so adjust your recipe accordingly. Baking soda and baking powder can produce cookies with different textures. Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies.
Baking soda tends to make cookies spread out whereas baking powder makes them puff up. So in the case of that soft, chewy, almost pancake-style crackly sugar cookie, baking soda is actually our new best friend.
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.
Cookie sheet is too warm. If you reuse a cookie sheet that has just been taken out of the oven, it is too hot and will cause your cookies to spread. Always use at least two cookie sheets, and always allow them to cool before putting more cookie dough on them.
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, says Haught Brown.
Chilling cookie dough
- Chilling cookie dough for just 30 minutes makes a big difference. The cookies pictured above are the same size, weight-wise.
- The longer you chill cookie dough, the smaller the changes become.
- Over time, chilling cookie dough produces cookies with darker color and more pronounced flavor.
Flour is the main ingredient that provides structure in a cookie – without it, there would be no cookie! The gluten in flour forms a web of sorts – the framework that catches the air bubbles/gasses given off during rising.
1. 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.
Adding melted butter to your recipe will change your cookies’ and cakes’ structure, density, and texture: Adding melted butter instead of the traditional softened butter will result in a chewier cookie. Softened butter in cookie dough will give you a more cake-like 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. Decorating home-baked goods: Parchment paper makes the perfect wrapper for baked goods.
If you absolutely need to bake more than one batch at a time for an event, holiday baking, etc– rotate the baking sheets from the top rack to bottom rack once halfway through the baking process.
Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you’re more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.
Yolks, where all of the fat is in an egg, increase richness, tenderness and flavor. Therefore, if you put an extra egg, you will get a chewier cookie. I do it all the time. If you put less, you will get a more crumbly cookie.
And because baking soda also introduces carbon dioxide, or air, to the dough, too much of it will create a cookie that’s cakey rather than chewy.
Step one: Cream together butter and sugars in a stand mixer (or in a large bowl with a hand mixer) until light and fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla. Step two: In a separate bowl shift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Slowly mix this add this to your mixture until combined.
What flour do professional bakers use?
With protein levels somewhere between cake flour and all-purpose flour (8-9 %), pastry flour strikes the ideal balance between flakiness and tenderness, making it perfect for pie dough, biscuits, brownies, tarts and many cookies. Whole Wheat Flour – Whole wheat flour means business.
Sifting the flour helped promote consistency in recipe results by removing the larger particles that could potentially result in densely textured baked goods or even ones that would sink in the middle. But modern techniques have improved significantly since then.
If you’re looking to bake lighter, crunchier cookies, self-rising flour might be an ideal substitution. Although the flavor itself won’t be affected by swapping self-rising flour for the all-purpose flour that your recipe calls for, the finished cookie will have a slightly different consistency and a lighter texture.
Our Top 10 Baking Oven for Cakes and Cookies in 2022
- Panasonic NB-G110P-K Cookie Baking Oven.
- Black+Decker Countertop Oven.
- Toshiba Digital Toaster Oven with Convection Cooking.
- Cuisinart Chef’s Baking Oven.
- LUBY Large Countertop Oven.
- Breville Smart Oven Pro.
- Oster Digital French Door Air Fry Oven.
- Prism Bakery Oven.
“When you bake at a lower temperature, you will get that perfect cookie with a soft center and crisp exterior,” she adds. Just make sure you increase baking time by a couple of minutes or you will end up with gooey underbaked cookies.
Place one baking sheet at a time onto center rack of preheated 350 degree F oven. Bake until cookies are golden around the edges, still have pale tops, and are soft in the center, about 8 to 10 minutes. (Do not overbake! They will firm up more during cooling.)
Examples of acids include: buttermilk, brown sugar, lemon juice, or yogurt. The bubbles from the carbon dioxide cause the batter to rise. Without baking soda, cookies would be dense pucks and cakes would be flat. Be careful not to use too much baking soda, as more baking soda doesn’t mean more rise.
“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.
9 Tips to Remember
- Use Real Butter and Keep It Cool. The low melting point of butter may be what makes your cookies flat.
- Use Shortening.
- Chill Dough Twice.
- Use Parchment Paper or a Silicone Liner.
- Measure Precisely.
- Use Fresh Baking Soda.
- Use Optional Add-Ins.
- Buy an Oven Thermometer.
If your first batch of cookies bakes flat, try adding 1-2 tablespoons of flour to the remaining dough. Then bake a test cookie before baking the rest or adding a bit more flour. The problem could be your baking sheet.
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.
To prevent cookies from spreading you have options, like baking at a higher temperature, chilling the cookie dough thoroughly, increasing the amount of flour in the recipe, reducing the sugar slightly, playing with the amount of egg in the recipe, changing the fat used, and many more!
Chill your cookie dough
Chilling your cookie dough for at least 24 hours or up to 72 hours does magical things to your baked cookies. Think of this like a “marinating” period. Not only will the flavors intensify, the texture will improve and your cookies will bake up nice and thick and even chewy.
What’s the difference in baking soda and baking powder?
The bottom line
While both products appear similar, they’re certainly not the same. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, which requires an acid and a liquid to become activated and help baked goods rise. Conversely, baking powder includes sodium bicarbonate, as well as an acid. It only needs a liquid to become activated.
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.
Your sugar cookies might be spreading because you are under-creaming or over-creaming the butter and sugar. Creaming the butter and sugar together creates structure in the cookie dough and adds pockets of air to give it a light texture. It’s sometimes referred to as mechanical leavening.
High fat and sugar content help make cookies crisp. Cookies can be made chewier by decreasing their egg content. Overbaking increases crispness. The following factors all increase spread in cookies: heavily greased pans, high sugar content, high liquid content, high oven temperature.
Carbon dioxide gas and water vapor form the bubbles which make cookies rise. Rising doesn’t just make cookies taller. It also opens up space to keep the cookie from becoming too dense. Salt slows down the decomposition of baking soda, so the bubbles don’t get too big.
Rest the Dough A secret baker’s trick is to rest your cookie dough in the fridge. You can rest it for at least an hour, which will evaporate some of the water and increase the sugar content, helping to keep your cookies chewy. The longer you allow your dough to rest in the fridge, the chewier your cookies will be.
In addition, baking powder produces a slightly different texture in cookies than baking soda does. While baking soda will create a coarse, chewy cookie texture, baking powder will produce a light, fine cookie texture. To achieve the best cookie results, use a double-acting baking powder as a substitute.
Unless the recipe tells you to grease the cookie sheet, resist the impulse. The extra grease causes cookie dough (which already contains a lot of fat) to spread. If you’re concerned about cookies sticking, line the cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone non-stick mat.
Cream of tartar helps stabilize whipped egg whites, prevents sugar from crystallizing and acts as a leavening agent for baked goods.
Can you use both baking soda and baking powder together?
Are baking soda and baking powder interchangeable? In a word, no. Because baking soda needs an acid with which to react and baking powder already contains it, they can’t be used in place of each other, at least not without making other adjustments to the recipe.
Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle. Take your time creaming the sugar and butter together at the beginning.
If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here’s what’s happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.
Placing the cookie dough between two sheets of parchment paper before rolling it out will prevent the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. Chilling the dough a second time before removing the cut-out cookies from the bottom layer of parchment paper keeps the shapes in tact while they are moved to the cookie sheet.
Chocolate chip cookies are done when they have a firm golden edge or bottom and appear slightly set on top. If the edges become dark brown, they are overbaked. If edges aren’t golden and tops are soft and shiny, bake a little longer.
(Exactly) How to Make Fluffy Cookies: 11 Genius Tips for Puffy…
- Make Sure Your Baking Soda and Baking Powder aren’t Expired.
- Use Baking Powder instead of Baking Soda.
- Roll Your Dough Balls into Cylinders.
- Chill the Dough.
- Use a Silicone Mat, not a Greased Baking Sheet.
- Add another Egg Yolk.
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.
Most of the time, cookies need to cool for around five to ten minutes before they can be moved and consumed. But it’s not as much of a cut and dry answer as you may think.