Best Ever Sugar Cookie Recipe (with Video) - Bigger Bolder Baking (2024)

FAQs

What makes cookies more fluffy? ›

Butter keeps cookies fluffy in two ways. First, creaming cold butter with sugar creates tiny, uniform air pockets that will remain in the dough it bakes up. Second, cold butter naturally takes a longer time to melt in the oven.

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.

More egg yolks will give you fudgy, dense cookies. Bringing eggs to room temperature beforehand will add more volume to the dough.

Use my favorite tall cookie trick to reduce excess spreading. Roll your dough balls to be taller rather than wider. This doesn't necessarily mean using more dough per cookie– we'll simply shape the cookie dough ball to be nice and tall, with a firm solid bottom to ensure the cookie doesn't topple over as it bakes.

Butter doesn't affect just the flavour of your cookies, it has a major impact on their texture and structure, too. When you cream butter and sugar together, you incorporate air into the batter, which will leaven the cookies as they bake, leading to cakier, fluffier cookies.

Using brown sugar will result in a denser, moister cookie. Brown sugar is also hygroscopic (more so than granulated sugar) and will therefore also attract and absorb the liquid in the dough.

Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen center.

Overmixing the dough: Overmixing can lead to tough and dense cookies. It's essential to mix the ingredients just until they come together to avoid developing too much gluten. 2. Incorrect oven temperature: Baking cookies at the wrong temperature can result in uneven baking.

We've found that the optimal temperature for cookie baking is 350F. It gives the butter in the dough time to melt and lightly spread before the remaining ingredients cook through.

Excess Sugar and Fat

If your cookie contains excess sugar or fat, it will spread while baking. If your first batch of cookies spreads, try adding a few tablespoons of flour to help thicken the remaining dough.

What does cream of tartar do for cookies? ›

What Does Cream of Tartar Do in Cookies? Cream of tartar makes cookies chewy, as it precludes the sugar in the dough from crystalizing, which would lead to crispiness (ie: the opposite of chewiness).

Take plain sugar cookies up a notch with exciting mix-ins like chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, toasted chopped nuts, chopped dried fruit or M&M's. Add these after blending your butter and egg into the sugar cookie mix.

Doing a Physical Check

Open up the oven, pull out the rack a bit, and push the sides of the cookie very lightly with a spatula or your finger. If the edge stays firm and doesn't fall inwards, then your cookies are done. If you leave a noticeable indentation, then your cookies likely need a few minutes more in the oven.

Freeze for 10 minutes.

After you roll the cookie dough into tall balls, freeze them for 10 minutes. Here's how I do it: after I roll cookie dough into balls to bake them, I place the balls on a plate and put the entire plate in the freezer. Then I preheat the oven.

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.

If your cookies come out of the oven looking flat, you may not have adequately chilled the dough before baking. Chilling times may vary depending on the cookie you're making, but you should typically chill cookie dough in the refrigerator for at least two hours before you pop it in the oven.

Briefly Freeze Your Cookie Dough Balls

Take your sheet of cookie dough balls and pop it in the freezer while your oven preheats, for about 20 minutes. This will help prevent excess cookie spreading, so you get nice fat thick cookies.

Baking powder is a two-in-one chemical leavening that combines a powdered alkali (sodium bicarbonate) with a powdered acid (originally, tartaric acid). When moistened in a dough or batter, a chemical reaction takes place that produces carbon dioxide gas, inflating cookies, cakes, and pancakes.