Read your recipe carefully before you begin. Baking demands accuracy. Unlike with other types of cooking, be careful when substituting ingredients. Not all ingredients bake the same way!- Use fresh ingredients. Check expiration dates of ingredients and test, if necessary, before using. For example, baking soda should bubble when added to vinegar, and baking powder should bubble when added to hot water.
- Don’t substitute different types of flour. All-purpose flour, cake flour and bread flour all behave differently. Make sure you use the correct amount of flour, too. Too much flour will make the cookies too hard!
- Don’t skip the salt, especially when using unsalted butter. If you use salted butter in your cookies, you can use half the amount of salt. Salt brings out the flavor and balances the sweet taste!
- Measure ingredients correctly and carefully. Level measuring cups to include the correct amount.
- Chill dough for cut-out cookies and soften at room temperature before rolling and flattening.
- Use vegetable shortening or unsalted butter to grease cookie sheets. Vegetable oil in the spaces between cookies burns during baking and is difficult to clean.
- Make cookies consistent thicknesses and sizes so they will bake evenly.
- Adjust baking times to achieve your favorite cookie texture. A little less time yields chewy cookies while a little more time makes them crispy!
- Cool cookies before decorating with icing.
Chocolate chip cookies fun facts
- The chocolate chip cookie was created by accident. The owner of Toll House Inn in Massachusetts in the 1930s added broken chocolate bar pieces to cookie batter hoping they would melt.
- The owner originally called her cookies “Butterdrop Do Cookies.” She later renamed them “Chocolate Crunch Cookies.”
- The first cookie was the size of only a quarter. The cookies were super crispy and eaten in one bite!
- Chocolate chips were invented specifically for chocolate chip cookie recipes.
- The world’s largest chocolate chip cookie record sits at 40,000 pounds with a diameter of 101 feet.
- Fifty-three percent of American adults say chocolate chip cookies are the best cookies.
- Chocolate chips start to melt at 90 F. Chocolate will burn if the oven exceeds 115 F.
SOURCES: whatscookingamerica.net, dish.allreceipes.com, epicurious.com
