What’s Wrong With My Cookies? A Troubleshooting Guide

More than anything during the holidays, I like the cooking of cookies, especially cookies with chocolate chips. This is something that my mother and I do together to relax and escape the pressures of shopping and entertainment.

But from time to time, our talkative nature derives the best from us and we are distracted from our recipe; When we pull a batch of oven cookies, we cannot help pest. What is the problem with them?

It happens to us all. So, with bakers of all levels of experience in mind, my mother and I decided to experiment. We have intentionally screwed up the cookie dough in different ways to see what would happen and if we could solve the different problems. First of all, we did not add enough flour; Then we added too much flour. With the rest of the dough, we added some additional eggs. But before I go too far on this road, let me share the recipe.

We used a recipe for chocolate chocolate cookies with simple toll and standard tolls, which plans:

• 2 1/4 cup of flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup of softened butter
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• 3/4 brown sugar cup
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 2 eggs

As the recipe requires, we have mixed the dry and humid ingredients separately, then combined them and added about a cup of semi-succured chocolate chips. We cooked on the second high rack at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, for all cookies.

Before we even put the cookies on the sheet, we could say what was wrong. The evidence was everything in the mixer.

It is true – looking at the way your dough sticks to the mixer, you can say if you have too much or not enough flour or too much eggs. In these cases, you can counter the imbalance immediately, adding more wet ingredients or more flour, if necessary, until you obtain the desired consistency.

Even the transfer of the dough to the cookie plate has made the errors visible. The dough with not enough flour was sticky and difficult to transfer. The dough that had too many eggs was flowing and spread on the pan. The dough with too much flour was like glue – we were able to roll it in a ball and it remained the same shape throughout its stay in the oven.

As much as it hurt us to move forward, we went ahead and cooked the “problem cookies” to show what they looked like when they got out of the oven. Here is an overview of our efforts and what we have done to repair each meat recipe.

Not enough flour

If your cookies are flat, brown, crisp and perhaps even a little linked to the edges, it means that you should add flour to your dough for the next lot. The cookies we made to recreate this scenario were brittle and fatty and cooked much faster than the other dough balls on the sheet.

Although the culprit is usually a deficit of flour, butter could also be to blame for this problem. Adding too soft or slightly melted butter to the dough can also cause flat cookies. Lots of bakers – My mom and I understand – heat the butter to soften it. Return the butter for too long in the microwave can make it start to melt, so if you notice a little puddle around your butter sticks, it is best to wait for it to cool down a little. Avoid the microwave completely if possible by cutting butter into small pieces and letting them sit for 30 minutes. If you are in a hurry, try to grill cold butter with a cheese grater in the bowl. He softens quickly.

Recovering the dough on a hot saucepan can also make cookies spread more; So, for the second batch and beyond, my mother and I generally stick the dough in the refrigerator until it is time to load the next cookie plate.

The easy correction here is to add more flour to the dough, little by little, until it sticks well to the mixer.

Make sure you also use a good quality thick baking sheet, because the dark thinly promotes browning and the cookies will cook faster and burn more easily. Use parchment paper to avoid gravitating the pan too much. If there is an excess of cooking spray, it can make cookies spread too much.

Too much flour

If your cookies come out of more cookies, you have probably added too much flour. Our cookies do not relax much of the rolled balls that we put on the baking sheet. They did not brown as well as the other cookies. This does not take much – in this case, my mother and I added only 3/4 cup of additional flour to the dough. The cookies had a good taste but were dry and brittle.

To make the cookies softer, Betty Crocker suggests adding 2 to 4 tablespoons of softened butter, or 1/4 cup of sugar, with dough.

Too many eggs

If your cookies come out flat on top, with a cake -shaped texture, you have added too much eggs. In this case, my mother and I added two additional eggs. Adding additional eggs is not a common problem, but we were curious. The results seemed presentable, although chocolate chips were a little lost in the dough. Moant in the cookie, however, we could make a big difference. Yuck. They were erased and lost a large part of their sweetness.

Saving cookies of too many eggs is not as simple as saving them too much or too much flour. It takes a little finagle. Add flour and maybe a little more sugar.

What my mother and I ended up doing was following the texture induced by the eggs to create something completely different. We have added more flour, more sugar, chopped nuts and cooked the dough in a greased 9 “x12” saucepan. So, Blondies!

Find your perfect cookie

I would not dare presume to define the perfect cookie. It’s different for each person. Personally, I love them as my mother makes them, soft in the middle and crisp on the edges, a little flat but not fragile. They hold well when they are sealed in an airtight container and freeze beautifully. These are made following the above recipe, only the butter is perhaps a little softer than expected.

Some people want their cookies to be a little more soft or a little higher. In this case, adding a pinch of additional flour and coolant in the dough can help achieve this goal.

If you like soft cookies, cool the dough before forming it in balls and cooking, remove the cookies from the oven just before they look completely. (The summits should not be wet.) A person I know swear by immediately sticking the baking sheet in the freezer to stop all cooking the residual heat of the pan, but you can also transfer them to a rack to start cooling immediately.

The role of each ingredient

As a bonus, I did a little research to find out what role each ingredient is playing in chocolate chip cookies, so that you can adjust your recipe as you want to experiment.

Flour Add stuffed animals and texture to cookies. Adding too little flour can make flat, fatty and crisp cookies. Most of the recipes assume that you will use a versatile eye, but if you want a lighter and more striking cookie texture, choose one with a lower protein content such as the cake and dough flour.

Baking soda Help cookies to spread outwards and upwards during cooking. Adding too little can cause flat and bumpy cookies. Add too much can give a bitter taste to cookies.

Salt improves flavors and balances the ingredients. Forget it from salt can cause too sweet cookies. Adding too much salt can cause horrible taste.

Butter is an emulsifier and it makes the cookies tender. He also adds the crisp element of the effect. Add too much butter can make the cookies flat and fatty. Adding too little butter can make the cookies hard and friable. You should use uncommon butter to control the salt content, but if you only have salted at hand, reduce the amount of salt added accordingly.

Sugar softens the cookies and makes it an attractive golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of the cookies. Add too much can make them fragile. Take your time by creating sugar and butter together at the start. Many bakers underestimate the time necessary to carefully mix the two ingredients, as this is rarely specified in a recipe, and this has a significant effect on the result. Aim for 2 minutes to start.

Brown off Add a beautiful color as well as a more complex flavor. They will also make cookies more soft, softer and thicker than white sugar. Add too much can cause dark brown cookies. Addition too few results in paler cookies.

Eggs Read the ingredients and make damp and soft cookies. The addition of too many eggs can cause gum cookies in the shape of a cake. The addition of too few eggs can cause dry and friable cookies. Beat each in separate and depth. If you lack eggs during cooking and find that you need it, you can add 1/4 cup of vegetable oil for each required egg. Another vegan substitute is to mix 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds in 3 tablespoons of water and to dip for five minutes until it thickens.

Chocolate chips are the recipe star. Adding too much can cause thin and too cooked cookies. Adding too little is simply sad. Experience with the mixture of different types of fleas for variety; Caramel, caramel, salty caramel, white chocolate and milk chocolate are always popular.

For a video unexpectedly on the chemical reactions that occur during cooking cookies, see the video below on the chemistry of cookies.