Although it looks easy, baking the perfect cookie is an art – and a delicious one at that. Say goodbye to hard and overbaked cookies and earn your place in your family’s sweet-treat hall of fame with these handy tips.
Choose the right sugar
Sugar is sugar, right? Wrong! The type of sugar you choose to use for your cookies influences the flavour, colour and consistency of your cookies. Using granulated white sugar will give you a crispy, flat and light cookie. Brown sugar contains molasses that will absorb the liquid of the dough more, resulting in a darker, moister and softer cookie.
@thepalatablelife Replying to @urmother2735 cookie science: brown sugar vs white sugar !! #cookiescience #cookies #cookierecipe ♬ Sunday – HNNY
Use your hands
Ditch your food processor and mix your batter by hand. Mixing your dough with an appliance like a food processor or stand mixer may cause too much friction and heat your butter and flour too quickly (if not monitored closely). The perfect cookie batter will be smooth, while undermixed dough will feel crumbly when you press into it, and heavy and greasy when overmixed.
Also read: Triple ginger biscuits
Mix your ingredients at room temperature
Will it really matter if you use hard butter and cold eggs? Yes, it does! Mixing your ingredients at room temperature will give your cookies that light, chewy, fluffy texture you desire. How do you know if your butter is at the right temperature? The temperature of the butter is perfect if you can press your finger into it without any resistance. Don’t fret if you store your eggs in the fridge. Simply fill a bowl with warm water and leave them submerged for about 10 minutes to warm them up.
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Chill your dough before baking
Chill out – that goes for your cookie dough as well. Placing your mixed cookie dough to chill in the fridge before baking allows the fat in the dough to solidify. That way, your cookies will hold their shape better and not spread too thin when baking. A great tip is to scoop the room-temperature dough on a sheet pan and cover with cling wrap before placing it in the fridge. Trying to scoop hard dough can be quite a challenge.
Also read: Giant triple chocolate cookies
