How to Make Thicker Cookies (With 10 Easy Steps)

Crisp, crunchy cookies are good, but nothing surpasses a thick, chewy, fudgy chocolate chip cookie. But, even if you use the same recipe every time, why do cookies occasionally fall flat and spread instead of blowing up? What is the best way to produce thicker cookies?

Keep your ingredients and dough as cold as possible when making thicker cookies. Use the freshest ingredients listed in the recipe, then carefully measure and blend them. Make sure your oven is adjusted to the right temperature and use high-quality, ungreased baking sheets.

There are a few important causes for pancake-like cookies, the majority of them are related to the temperature, amount, and quality of your components. Baking batch after batch of thick, delectable cookies is as simple as remembering a few baking tips.

1 – Refrigerate Your Cookie Dough

Refrigerating your cookie dough is the secret to thicker cookies. Even after just a couple of hours in the fridge, chilled cookie dough yields thicker, chewier, tastier cookies. Store your cookie dough overnight for optimal results.

For cookie dough, refrigeration is a miraculous process. It not only cools all of the ingredients, but it also relaxes the gluten in the wheat and enables the flour to begin absorbing the moisture in the dough, increasing the taste and texture. It is also much simpler to deal with cool cookie dough.

If you’re making several batches of cookies, chill half the dough while you work on the other half. If you can’t fit all of the trays into the oven at once, leave the unbaked cookie trays in the freezer to protect them from warming up in the kitchen.

2 – Use Room-Temperature Butter

If you don’t have time to chill your cookie dough, follow the advice of the great Betty Crocker. The biggest reason why cookies fall flat, according to Betty Crocker, is because the butter in the dough was too warm, even melted, and the cookies didn’t have a time to set. As a consequence, the cookies stretch out and become thin and unpleasant.

The best temperature for your butter to generate thicker cookies is a cold room temperature, approximately 67F (around 20C). At this temperature, the butter will be hard yet flexible enough to poke with your finger.

Avoid putting your butter in the microwave if it is too cold. Instead, take it out of the fridge about 30 minutes before baking and cut it into pieces to allow it to cool faster.

If your butter is too soft, return it to the refrigerator to harden.

3 – Use the Correct Fat

Because they respond differently when cooked and have various fat percentages, not all fats are interchangeable in cookie baking. For example, margarine has just 35% fat and should not be used as a butter alternative in cookies unless the recipe specifically calls for it.

Shortening, on the other hand, is 100% fat and will spread less than butter, which includes water. To make thicker cookies, try baking with half butter and half shortening.

4 – Focus on Your Mixing Technique

Overbeating and undermixing your dough are both terrible ideas that might result in flat cookies.

Don’t Overbeat the Butter and Sugar

For two reasons, overbeating or creaming the butter and sugar might result in pancake-like cookies:

• Overbeating warms the butter, causing it to melt.
• Overbeating also introduces too much air into the mix. Unlike a cake, the structure of a cookie will collapse during baking or cooling.

Don’t Undermix the Dough

Assemble the dough by including all of the components. To ensure that all of the butter is incorporated, scrape the bottom of the mixer bowl while mixing.

If you haven’t blended in all of the butter, the cookies will be uneven; some will be dry, while others will have too much butter and spread out.

5 – Add Less Granulated Sugar

A strong hand with the sugar might sometimes be your thick cookie’s worst enemy. Although sugar is solid at ambient temperature, it dissolves when heated, resulting in increased oven spread.

Try measuring your sugar more precisely for thicker cookies. You might also try using brown sugar for part of the white granulated sugar to make thicker cookies.

6 – Add More Flour

A shortage of flour is another major cause of cookies dropping flat. If this is the case, increase the quantity of flour in your regular cookie recipe. To begin, add a few teaspoons to the batter and bake a test cookie. To get the desired thickness, adjust the quantity of flour.

You may need to use extra flour for one of the following reasons: you are not measuring accurately, you live in a moist environment, or you live at a high altitude.

Measure Correctly

If you’re a freestyle baker who loves to add a little bit of this and a little bit of that, you’ll know. Unfortunately, only pros (and grandma) can predict how much a cup or tablespoon is. Invest in some good measuring cups and a kitchen scale, and watch your cookies climb to new heights.

To accurately measure flour, scoop it into the appropriate size measuring cup. When it’s filled, use the flat side of a knife to gently level off the flour.

If You Live in a Humid Environment

Flour absorbs moisture from a wet or humid atmosphere, resulting in cookie dough puddles. If the weather is the reason your cookies aren’t thick and lovely, consider adding a little extra flour.

If You Live at a High Altitude

Although high altitude affects cakes and bread more than cookies, you must still make minor modifications to your cookie recipes. One of the changes will be to increase the quantity of flour required by roughly half a cup.

7 – Use Bleached Flour

If you’ve been using unbleached flour, which is a healthier option, but your cookies are coming out flat, try bleached flour. Because bleached flour absorbs moisture more readily, your cookies will be rich and beautiful.

8 – Check Your Rising Agent

A rising or leavening ingredient, such as baking powder or baking soda, is used in most cookie recipes. Your cookies will never thicken if your rising agent isn’t fresh and doing its job. Check the expiration date on your ingredients to ensure they are fit for purpose.

Also, ensure that your rising agent is properly measured. Surprisingly, adding too much rising agent might cause your cookies to fall flat in the oven because they rise too much and lose their structure.

9 – Use an Ice Cream Scoop

Cookies made with flat, squishy cookie dough will be flat and spongy. To be ready for baking, the uncooked cookie dough must be tall and circular. Nigella Lawson, a British culinary writer, makes wonderfully consistent, thick chocolate chip cookies using a quarter-cup measuring ice cream scoop (approximately 60 ml).

Cookie Trays Are Important

You may have the greatest cookie batter in the world, but did you know that the thickness of your cookies is affected by the baking trays you use?

Use the Right Baking Tray

My tried-and-true Pillsbury Poppin Fresh Homemade Cookies book has several tips for baking the ideal cookie, with the majority of them focusing on baking trays. The best cookie baking tray:

• is strong enough to transmit heat effectively; do not use a fragile, inexpensive sheet.
• features a tiny rim on one or both ends but not on all sides.
• is smooth and lustrous, allowing for uniform, light browning.
• is non-stick, so you dont have to grease it.

Use an Ungreased Cookie Tray

Most cookie recipes include enough fat to eliminate the need to oil the baking pan. When you add a layer of fat to the baking pan, the cookies spread and fall flat.

If the recipe calls for it, oil the pan lightly and wipe it clean between batches. Alternatively, if you are concerned about cookies sticking, use baking paper or parchment.

Cool Cookie Trays Between Baking

It’s tempting to grab the closest cookie tray as it comes out of the oven, but doing so can cause the fat in the dough to melt before it goes into the oven, resulting in flat cookies.

Allow each tray to return to room temperature before re-filling it. Also, before filling the tray with dough, wipe it off with a paper towel to remove any remaining oil. If you’re in a hurry, run cold water over the trays to chill and clean them.

10 – Check the Oven’s Temperature

If your cookies continue to fall flat, your oven might be at fault. Here are some oven-safe tips:

• Before you begin baking, preheat the oven for 10 to 15 minutes to get the correct temperature.
• Check that your oven is not overheated; a hot oven may rapidly melt the fat in the cookies, leaving you with pools of dough.
• Purchase an oven thermometer to keep your oven calibrated.

Final Thoughts

A variety of things may determine whether your cookies are thick or thin. Pay attention to the temperature and quality of your ingredients, measure them correctly, use quality baking pans, and make sure your oven is operating properly to guarantee you always produce thick, chewy cookies.