There are several reasons why you may want your cookies to be flatter. Flat cookies may be your personal choice, which is a good enough reason to prepare them that way.
Let’s take a look at some tried-and-true methods for making a flatter biscuit.
Contents
- Find a Recipe for Flat Cookies
- What Ingredients Can Help Make Cookies Flat?
- What Techniques Can Help Make Cookies Flat?
- Essentials for Experimenting with Recipes
- FAQs
- What makes cookies flatter?
- How do you make cookies flatten more?
- Why didn’t my cookies flatten?
- What is the secret to a flat cookie?
- Does baking soda make cookies flat?
- How do you fix puffy cookies?
- Do cookies flatten as they cool?
- How do you flatten cookies without sticking them?
- How do you make cookies fluffy instead of flat?
- Why do my cookies come out puffy?
Find a Recipe for Flat Cookies
Finding a recipe that is specifically designed for flat cookies is one of the simplest ways to achieve that result. Fortunately, there are several options available online and in cookbooks.
That isn’t always an option; you might already have a favorite recipe, or you might have to work around available ingredients, allergy information, or a variety of other factors. Perhaps you’re creating your own recipe for (flat) cookies!
It’s also worth noting that recipes that promise cakey or thick cookies should be avoided. That may seem obvious, but double-check, especially if you’ve been using the same recipe for a long time.
Let’s take a look at the science behind flat vs fluffy cookies to have a better understanding of how it all works.
What Ingredients Can Help Make Cookies Flat?
If you are already working with a recipe or creating your own, you must understand the function of each ingredient and how to tweak it to achieve the desired results.
Let’s take a look at some of the most frequent cookie components and how they affect thickness:
Flour: Flour is a must-have ingredient in cookies (and other baked items). However, the more flour you use, the more full your cookies will be.
That means you should use less flour when making flat cookies. You might hunt for a recipe that uses a little quantity of flour or try reducing the amount of flour in your favorite dish. Always take caution not to overestimate.
Baking soda is a rising agent, which means it causes baked products to puff up, which is precisely what you don’t want for flat cookies. You may completely delete baking soda from your cookie recipe.
Keep in mind, though, that leaving out the baking soda will result in flatter, denser cookies. This is because baking soda emits carbon dioxide, which drives the cookie dough apart; without baking soda, this process would not occur.
Almost every cookie recipe calls for some type of fat. This is usually oil, butter, or shortening.
Shortening should be avoided while making flat cookies since it gives the biscuits a cakey texture and makes them taller.
While we’re on the subject of fat, how about some butter for flat cookies? The butter melts in the oven as part of the baking process; if the butter is extremely soft or even melted when you combine the ingredients and place them in the oven, it won’t require baking time to melt.
Use extremely soft, room temperature butter or even melted butter for cookies that spread quickly. In addition, if you want flat cookies, never chill your dough.
Sugar: The sort of sugar you use is maybe the most important component in cookies. The crispiness of the cookie is affected by this.
A greater white sugar ratio results in a crunchy, crispy cookie that is often flatter. Cookies with extra brown sugar are chewier, softer, and typically thicker.
However, you do not want to eliminate all of the brown sugar because it adds flavor depth. Choose light brown sugar over dark brown sugar (the darker the sugar, the chewier the cookie) and substitute white sugar for some of the brown sugar.
Eggs: Have you ever had fluffy scrambled eggs? It exists, and it isn’t only for breakfast.
Because eggs can make baked goods fluffy, you can leave one out for flatter cookies. You will also need to reduce the amount of flour used since the egg is a wet component that has to bond to the dry; this will need some experimenting, or you may replace the egg with a banana or applesauce.
However, adding an extra egg white (no yolks, please) helps to dry out the cookie, making it crunchier.
What Techniques Can Help Make Cookies Flat?
Aside from the ingredients, there are some mixing and cooking techniques that can have a significant impact on the size and texture of your cookies. Let’s take a look at a couple of them.
Baking temperature: Cookies must be baked in the oven for a certain period of time at a specific temperature. We wouldn’t normally advise you to vary from your recipe on this one.
If you want flatter cookies, you might try reducing the temperature slightly. Reduce your temperature by 25 degrees initially, then 50 degrees on the following batch if that doesn’t work.
What is the science underlying the temperature change? A lower temperature enables the butter and sugar to melt before the cookie sets, which causes the components to spread out more and results in a broader, flatter biscuit.
Cooking time: Cooking at a lower temperature implies keeping them in the oven for a longer period of time. This will also make them crisper, which you may prefer if you like flat cookies.
Essentials for Experimenting with Recipes
Learning how to alter or experiment with recipes is a lot of fun, especially after you have some basic baking abilities. There are a few actions you may do to increase your chances of success.
To begin, weigh the items on a kitchen scale. You want your ingredient ratios to be as precise as possible so that you can alter or repeat your approaches the following time.
When it comes to ratios, have a calculator on available since you don’t want to round or estimate your measurements. In addition, a conversion chart might be useful.
Purchase an oven thermometer to ensure that your oven temperature is as accurate as possible, and recalibrate it as needed.
Whether you’re aiming for flat cookies or anything else, don’t forget the most crucial aspect of the process: have fun and enjoy yourself!
FAQs
If your cookies consistently come out flat, regardless of the recipe, your oven is probably too hot. Here’s what’s going on. In an overheated oven, the butter melts fast before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. when a result, when the butter spreads, so does the whole liquidy biscuit.
How to Get a Good Spread on Warm Dough. To ensure a nice spread during baking, consider using warm cookie dough rather than refrigerating it.
Dough that has been refrigerated.
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Make use of new baking powder.
Use the appropriate baking sheet.
Use a Scoop and avoid overcrowding.
Avoid overmixing.
Pour in more liquid.
One of the most typical causes for cookies failing to spread in the oven is that you used too much flour. Cookies depend on the ideal butter-to-flour ratio to spread exactly the correct amount when cooked. When using cup measurements, it is very easy to overmeasure flour.
Reduce the flour in the cookie batter to make the cookies flatter so that they spread when cooked. Remember that flour is a binder that binds the cookie dough together; using too much flour makes the cookie tougher to spread when baking.
Baking powder
Baking soda is often used in recipes that include an acidic element like vinegar, sour cream, or citrus. Tip: For baking soda recipes, work fast and bake soon after combining, otherwise the process will stop and your cookies will flop flat.
If the cookies you’re making are significantly too fluffy, just smoothing down the cookie batter before baking it may work great. Place a spoonful on a baking sheet and flatten it slightly using a spoon or fork.
When you put the baking pan in the oven, it should be cold. Cookies will flatten when put on hot baking pans, so either change out pans or allow your one pan to cool between batches when baking batches of cookies.
The dough should be refrigerated. Warm dough is more sticky than cold dough.
Work with little batches of dough at a time. Divide the dough into little pieces and work with them one at a time.
Make use of nonstick cooking spray.
If your dough is sticking to the surface and rolling pin despite the use of nonstick spray, try rolling it between two sheets of parchment paper.
We understand your concern, but if you want airy cookies, you must chill… the dough. Why? Because of the problem of the butter melting too quickly. Allow your batter to chill for at least 10 minutes before scooping it onto a baking sheet.
Q: How come my cookies are so fluffy and cakey? Too much air is whipped into the dough. The fluffy texture you desire in a cake is achieved by pounding a lot of air into room temperature butter and sugar, and the same is true for cookies. Don’t overwork the butter and sugar while creaming them together.