Drop Sugar Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What makes drop cookies different? ›

Drop cookies are made by scooping up more or less evenly sized spoonfuls of dough and dropping the spoonful of dough ( or just placing) it onto the baking sheet. For cut out cookies, the dough is usually much stiffer and they have to be rolled out flat first before the shapes can be cut out.

Cream of tartar makes cookies chewy, as it precludes the sugar in the dough from crystalizing, which would lead to crispiness (ie: the opposite of chewiness).

If you enjoy your cookies soft and chewy, chances are likely the recipe contains a common ingredient that serves a very specific purpose. No, it's not granulated sugar, nor the butter. It's not the egg, all-purpose flour, or even the vanilla extract. The simple, yet oh-so-necessary component is cornstarch.

Certain cookies — Sugar Cookies, Snickerdoodles, Classic Peanut Butter Cookies — need to be flattened a bit before they bake, lest they end up emerging from the oven looking like ping-pong balls rather than typical flat, round cookies.

Cookies fall into a few different categories. The most common is a drop cookie, where dough is simply scooped onto cookie sheets. Fans of chocolate desserts will easily recognize chocolate chip cookies as classic examples.

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.

The powdered sugar in the recipe helps absorb moisture from other ingredients, giving the cookies a unique bumpy looking appearance and an extra tender and chewy texture.

Baking soda also serves another important purpose when it comes to cookies: It encourages spreading by raising the mixture's pH, which slows protein coagulation. This gives the dough more time to set before the eggs set, which results in a more evenly baked cookie.

Cream of tartar prevents the sugar in cookies from crystallizing which would create a crunchier cookie. Cream of tartar is also used with baking soda to become a leavening agent, which makes baked goods puff up while in the oven due to the production of carbon dioxide gas.

Try using baking powder instead of baking soda. Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder.

What is the secret to super chewy cookies? ›

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle. Take your time creaming the sugar and butter together at the beginning.

For longer storage, we recommend forming the dough into a large round, then wrapping it in plastic wrap. This will protect the dough from any potential aromas in the fridge. For slice-and-bake icebox cookies: On a sheet of plastic wrap, transfer the room temperature dough.

Refrigerating the dough allows the flour to fully hydrate and helps to make the cookie dough firmer. Firm dough prevents the cookies from spreading too much, which is why chilling the dough is a crucial step for cut-out and rolled cookies.

Rolled and cut cookies take much more time and preparation than drop or bar cookies as the dough usually has to be chilled before it can be rolled and cut. Once the dough has been rolled out it can be cut with cookie cutters, a knife or a pastry wheel.

Chocolate chip cookies are “drop” cookies, which means exactly what you think: cookie dough is scooped and dropped onto a baking sheet.

a cookie made by dropping batter from a spoon onto a cookie sheet for baking.

Simply one you shape by dropping balls of dough onto a baking sheet – as opposed to rolling out and cutting with a cutter, or baking in an iron (e.g., pizzelle). Drop cookies include peanut butter cookies, snickerdoodles, oatmeal cookies – really, all the best-known, favorite cookies.