Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cookie Baking Tips

I have been making cookies ever since preschool, seriously. I remember I was always so excited when our preschool teacher would let us help her make cookies. I wanted to do every part of it. So as soon as I got a little older, like grade school, I would always make tons of cookies. It was never cake or Brownies or anything else. Just cookies. And I always would try new recipes. Not just different kinds of cookies but different kinds of cookies per type. I wanted to know "the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe" and the "perfect snickerdoodle recipe" through so much experimentation, I finally came up with or found my own favorite of each kind of cookie. For a while Ashley's Chocolate Chip cookies was my favorite (yes I invented that one, and now its famous on allrecipes). Its a really good one, but not my favorite anymore. Here's a list of my favorite cookies per each type. Just Click on the names and it'll take you to their links

Favorite snickerdoodles or HERE
Favorite Peanut Butter cookie
Favorite m&m Cookie
Favorite Ginger Snap
Favorite double chocolate cookie
Favorite sugar cookies
Favorite Oatmeal cookie

Best cookie cookbook
Best cookie scoop

Best cookie sheet


Tips for making good cookies:
do not over-bake. 8 min at 350 is almost always perfect. sometimes i even just do 7.
Take cookies off of baking sheet immediately after u remove them from the oven, otherwise the bottoms of the cookies turn brown.
Too much flour = stiff bready, biscuit-like cookie
Not enough flour = flat cookie and/or cookie that spreads all over pan. For example, nestle toll house chocolate chip cookie recipe always turns out flat. Add another 1/2 c flour to the original recipe and... Bam! perfect cookie.
Basically, if dough feels wet, add more flour. I like to be able to pack my cookie dough into the scoop, w/ my hands.
crisco makes a better drop cookie, in terms of texture
Butter is better than crisco when it comes to cut-out sugar cookies.
For drop cookies: Small, round shaped, cookies, using above cookie scoop, turn out better than big cookies. (I typically pack in the cookie dough w/ my fingers and then push the button to drop the dough on the baking sheet.)
For sugar cookies: Roll dough thick . like 1/2" thick. and only use the bakeat350 cookie recipe. Make sure you don't overbake sugar cookies. 7 min at 350 makes them perfect.
Sour cream or cream cheese in a cookie recipe is never a good thing. It makes for cookies with a cardboardy texture. Unless you like that ): (cream cheese, is however great in frosting)

OFF SUBJECT: But here's a link to my favorite pie crust recipe. I meant to post this a long time ago, kept forgetting. Its called Easy to Remember Pie Crust