5 Tips to Making Any Cookie Recipe Better

Improving Your Homemade Cookie Recipe

For years, people have been asking me how to perfect their homemade cookie recipes.  I’ve even seen online forums dedicated to “cracking the code” on how our cookie recipe differs from the others.  If you’re one of the curious ones, it’s pretty simple: Carol’s Cookies were born and perfected in the kitchen.  Even so, there are little tricks that helped my family recipe go from average cookie to the best handmade cookies out there (yes, we’re a little biased).

Here are 5 tips to help make your homemade cookie recipe even more delicious!

1. Preventing Burnt Bottoms

To avoid burning the bottom of the cookies, put a cookie sheet on top of the baking sheet with the waxed side facing up. Otherwise, the metal baking sheet gets too hot and can turn a really good homemade cookie into a crispy mess.

2. The Finest Ingredients Matter

Use the finest ingredients: pure butter, crack your own eggs and kosher salt. If you’re making chocolate chip cookies, make sure you use a premium chocolate with a decent cocoa butter content.  This may seem like a basic concept, but using gourmet ingredients will make sure that your cookie recipe is on the right track to wow your taste-testers.

3. Mastering Even Baking

A convection oven is the best way to go to ensure your cookies are baked evenly. Be sure to place the tray of cookies on the middle rack.  The top rack will burn the tops too quickly, and the bottom rack may cause you to bake the cookies much longer so they are not raw, ultimately drying them out.

4. The Art and Science of Mixing

Understand the art and science of proper mixing. Your fats (butter), sugars and eggs should be mixed together.  We like to add the vanilla at the first mixing stage, but make sure it’s a pure vanilla and none of that imitation stuff!  This will help incorporate the sugars and fats, which is necessary for the, “omg-this-is-the-most-amazing-cookie-ever” recipe.

5. Watchful Baking

Watch your oven constantly! This is very important! You could have the best cookie recipe on the planet, but if your cookies are baked too much, bye-bye moistness and those glaring compliments you deserve!  Always set the timer for 3 minutes less than what the recipe calls for.  Once you start seeing some golden brown tones on the tops of the cookies, your cookies are nearly ready.  Don’t wait until they are fully brown, or you may be giving them away as paperweights.

Enjoy the process of perfecting your homemade cookie recipe. Like anything in life, practice makes perfect!  And in this case, you’ll get to taste test a lot of cookies in the process – yum! Happy Baking!