Baking Perfect Cookies*

Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Restaurant in Massachusetts, invented the chocolate chip cookie. In desperation after running out of nuts for her favorite cookie recipe, she chopped up a block of chocolate to add to the dough instead. The word cookie comes from the Dutch word for cake, koekje. The first cookies were actually tiny cakes baked as a test to make sure that the oven temperature was right for baking a large cake. BARS, DROP, MOLDED OR SHAPED, PRESSED, ROLLED, REFRIGERATOR,

Use stick butter or real margarine–not spreads, tub, whipped or lite. Follow directions, either room temperature or cold. Do not melt. Butter add crispness, shortening add chewiness.

For rolled dough, cut cookies as close together as possible. Collect trimmings and press–don’t knead–them together, then re-roll. Cookies from re-rolled dough will be less tender. Use dental floss to cut refrigerator cookies dough into slices. The dough cuts easily and cleanly, without any ragged edges.

If cookie dough sticks to your hand, try wetting your hands with cold water occasionally when shaping the dough into balls

Honey contains high levels of fructose. Cookies made with honey will stay moist longer and not spoil as quickly as all-sugar cookies. Any liquid sweeteners such as honey, maple syrup, corn syrup, or molasses–will result in a slightly chewier cookie. Brown sugar is a combination of sugar and molasses. Powdered sugar, also called confectioner’s sugar, is finely ground white sugar, packed with a small amount of cornstarch to help prevent clumping.

Toffee bits go rancid. Use chopped up candy bars.

Cookie dough is a breeze to freeze. You can have freshly baked cookies ready in a jiffy when you’ve got a batch already frozen. (Bar cookie batters, meringues, and macaroons and frostings don’t freeze well.) Most baked cookies freeze well.
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Lining your baking pan when making bars with parchment or foil makes it easy to remove and cut bars, and simplifies clean-up. For clean cuts, wipe the knife between cuts. Use parchment when making cookies that have to be removed immediately and shaped. Keep cookies sheets shiny. The metal reflects heat and keeps cookies from burning as quickly

Follow directions as to greasing pans or not, removing cookies immediately or letting set. If cookies stick, return to oven for a short time and remove immediately. Don’t use oil to grease pans. It will burn on the pans.

1. Measure shortening in water.
2. Measure dry ingredients–sift, spoon, scoop– in cups made for dry ingredients.
3. Measure brown sugar by packing.
4. Measure liquid in measuring cups made for liquid
5. Bake in middle of oven–one rack at a time in preheated oven. Don’t put dough on hot sheet.
6. Check at minimum time.
7. When using teaspoon to drop cookies, they mean a serving teaspoon.
8. For perfectly round cookies, use spring handle ice cream scoops.

* From either a magazine article or the web. We do not take ownership and would gladly give credit to deserving party.