Cookies 101: Tips to make all your baking merrier
Whatever cookies you choose to whip up this season, know that even the simplest-looking recipes are often meticulously worked out, said Ben Mims in the Los Angeles Times. If you see an odd measurement for a powdered ingredient, for example, it’s probably because the recipe creator has accounted for the fact that four leveled tablespoons of cornstarch measure differently than a leveled quarter cup, despite the mathematical equivalence. Below, three concepts that should help with all your cookie baking:
‘Room temperature’ matters. “This perennial plea is probably the most important”: Unless otherwise specified, the butter and eggs should be at room temperature. When creaming butter and sugar for cookie dough, you’re creating an emulsion to hold all the ingredients together. If you add cold eggs, they can “seize the butter,” causing the mixture to appear split and lose its emulsion.
And if the butter is cold? If you forgot to leave the eggs and butter out overnight, you’re not cooked. To quickly warm a stick of butter, leave it in its wrapper and microwave it in one to three five-second bursts—“until it’s just soft to the touch.” Cold eggs should be placed in a bowl and submerged in hot tap water. After a minute, pour the water off, add hot water again, and the eggs should be warm enough in about 5 minutes.
The chilling counts, too. Many recipes call for cookie dough to be chilled before you bake, sometimes for an hour, sometimes overnight. Sometimes you chill the pre-formed cookies, sometimes the entire ball of dough. Follow the recipe closely. Besides lowering the dough’s temperature, which will affect how quickly the cookies spread, you are letting the flour fully hydrate, which improves texture.