Use my pro tips to learn how to make and keep cookies soft long after you bake them. These simple steps work with nearly any cookie recipe!
Cookie textures vary, from crispy gingersnaps and chewy oatmeal cookies to soft chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookie bars.
Making soft cookies is pretty straight forward, but it can be frustrating when your homemade cookies keep turning out hard or crumbly.
After you make a perfect batch, it's also good to know how to keep the cookies soft for a few days.
Common Problems with Cookie Texture
Baking is a science, where each and every ingredient works together in perfect harmony. When the ratio of wet and ingredients in a chocolate chip cookie recipe is wrong, it can cause problems.
- Spreading too much: Cookies tend to spread too much in the oven when the dough is too warm and/or when it includes too many wet ingredients.
- Dry and crumbly: There are several common reasons that a cookie can be too dry. These include over mixing and/or over rolling the dough, measuring the flour incorrectly, using too many dry ingredients, and overbaking.
- Too cakey: Cookies often turn out cakey when you use the wrong type of flour, or when you use too much baking soda. Additionally, using eggs that are larger than what the recipe calls for can cake-like cookies. Lastly, mixing the dough for too long increases the air causing them to be very light and cakey.
Liz's Tips for Baking Perfectly Soft Cookies
Follow these simple tips to ensure that your homemade cookies turn out delicious and with the perfect soft and chewy texture.
1. Follow the recipe carefully
If you have been changing measurements or substituting ingredients in the recipe that you’ve been using, try following it precisely first and see how it goes.
2. Use softened butter
To properly cream the sugar and butter together, it's important that the butter is slightly soft, but not too soft. Reversely, if the butter is too cold, the cookies won't spread enough in the oven. Leave the butter at room temperature for 15 minutes before starting the recipe.
3. Chill the dough before baking
Before you bake cookies, chill the dough balls for a few hours in the fridge. Chilling cookie dough beforehand allows the fats to cool, helping your cookies to expand slower in the oven and hold a better texture and flavor. This results in cookies that are chunkier and chewier instead of thin and flat.
Also, be sure to use a cookie scoop to portion the dough. This ensures that the entire batch bakes up evenly.
4. Add cornstarch
If your cookies always end up flat and thin, the next time you bake them, add a tablespoon of cornstarch to the ingredients. Cornstarch makes soft cookies by preventing the dough from spreading as much in the oven.
5. Increase the ratio of brown sugar
Brown sugar contains more molasses than white sugar has which adds moisture and slight acidity to the cookies. Increasing the brown sugar ratio over the white sugar ratio releases more molasses and tends to result in thicker and chewier cookies.
6. Don’t overbake
Overbaking cookies is another factor in having hard or crumbly cookies. Make sure to follow your recipe’s baking time and temperature.
Halfway through the bake time, rotate the sheet 90 degrees to help them bake evenly. Also, check them a couple of minutes sooner than the recipe instructions designate. It's better to slightly underbake them than to burn them.
Another way to minimize the chances of over baked cookies is to line your baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
How to Keep Cookies Soft After Baking
If they are stored properly in an airtight container, homemade cookies will stay soft for about a week at room temperature. However, when exposed to too much air and/or moisture, cookies will become stale much sooner.
Contrary to what you might think, reheating cookies in the microwave can dry them out. To prevent this, cover them with a slightly damp paper towel before you pop them in the microwave. Do not microwave them for longer than 10 to 20 seconds at full power.
Storing cookies in an air tight container with a slice of plain bread will help keep them soft, as the cookies absorb the moisture of the bread and they can stay fresh longer.
It's best to store cookies in airtight plastic or glass containers. Tins do not seal as well as plastic/glass containers. You want to make sure your cookie tins have a tight seal.
You can try to soften stale cookies by placing them in an airtight container with a slice of plain bread for several hours. Even better, let them sit in the container overnight.
Properly Freezing Cookies
You can keep your cookies and cookie dough fresh for longer by learning the steps to freeze them properly. Make sure that your cookies are completely cooled when you freeze them. Store them in a properly sealed, airtight container before placing them in the freezer.
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