Just a few tips for great home baked cookies:
1) My first tip concerns mixers. I realize some people do not own stand mixers and, if they do, they are likely to have a big Kitchenaid. I am blessed to own both the Modern Kitchenaid and Vintage Sunbeam mixers. A good stand mixer is a BIG help on the road to great cookies.
While the Kitchenaid is great for a lot of things, including kneading bread dough, my prefered mixer for cookies is the old Sunbeam.
If you do not have one of these, and would like one, they are pretty easy to find in antique malls, thrift stores, estate sales, and ebay etc. They are real work horses and last forever. One caveat - try to get permission to plug it in before you buy so you are sure the motor is not shot.
The Sunbeam bowls are big and wide and rotate while running. This allows you do do a couple of helpful things:
a.)You can scrape the bowl while mixing.
b.) It's easy to add ingredients without stopping the mixer or changing the position of the bowl.
c.) The beaters seem to add more air than a paddle attachment - more air means a fluffier mixture of butter, sugar and eggs before you add dry ingredients.
d.) There are more speed settings to facilitate slowly adding dry ingredients while mixing.
e.) You can watch the dough more easily to keep from overbeating.
I've actually tried making identical cookie recipes in the two kinds of mixers and there IS a difference in the final product.
Back to tips:
2) Second tip is to beat the sugar/shortening mixture as much as possible before adding the eggs
3) After adding the eggs beat the mixture at least 3 minutes to get as fluffy as possible before adding vanilla or other flavorings or liquids. The more fluffy this mixture gets the lighter the cookies will be and the more the sugar will caramelize while baking.
4) Always whisk or sift together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl so that there are no pockets of salt or baking soda or baking powder.
5) The best pans for baking cookies are those "air bake" cookie sheets. The jelly roll pans that look like they are made of the same material tend to burn the bottoms of the cookies while the tops are underdone.
6) Many cookies benefit from being made on a silpat or parchment. Especially anything that you want to mold while still warm - like a tuille or brandysnap. If you don't have a silpat parchment paper works too. Note: Silpat is an actual trade name - you can find cheaper silicone baking mats at Costco, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. These usually work just as well.
7) Setting the oven temperature 25 degrees (F) lower than the recipe says will usually produce a more evenly browned cookie - I learned that trick from the Mrs. Fields cookie book.
8) Always remember to move the pans around halfway through the bake - both by changing which racks the pans are on and rotating the pans 180 degrees.
9) Some cookies need to be removed from the cookie sheet immediately and others should sit for a few minutes to set up. Be sure you read the recipe carefully to see which is which.
10) If the recipe says to chill the dough, don't muddle on with warm dough thinking it won't matter. It will. I like to chill mine in a plastic wrapped disk like pastry dough.
11) Cookie scoops are all the rage now but two old fashioned dinner spoons will usually do the trick. I have a whole post about cookie tools that you can find by clicking here.
12) When you roll out a chilled dough like sugar cookie dough the thickness REALLY matters. The cookies in the picture below were all cut with the same cookie cutter but the different thickness of dough made a big difference to the size of the final cookie.
13) Sugar cookies can be easily decorated with standard water/powdered sugar frosting. You don't always need to make fancy royal icing. If you like to do the "edge and flood" technique just make the edge icing fairly stiff and once you are done with it add more water to turn it into flood icing. The cookies below (and at the top of the page) were done with ordinary icing and the edge and flood technique.
These are all I have at the moment but I discover of new ones all the time so check back every now and then to see if I have any more :-)
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