Cookie Facts

After my post on Yeast facts and Bread baking facts, and the amazing response and appreciation I got for that, I am motivated and excited to write an article on Cookies. I have been baking cookies since almost eleven years now and have baked more actively in the last 7-8 months after joining HBG, the baking group on Facebook that I am a part of. I have also read a lot on cookies and have learnt quite some facts about it from various bloggers and articles on the internet. I have learnt many things from my mistakes too. This is a compilation of my experiences and my knowledge about cookies. Some information have been taken from various sites on the internet.

Before we start baking cookies, let us try to understand some facts about cookies? What is the basic difference between cookies and biscuits?

Cookies are baked goods made of flour, eggs, sugar and oil or butter. Cookies are mostly sweet. Some cookies are chewy with choco chips, nuts and fruits in it. Cookies mostly spread on baking and can be scooped or flattened with hands or even sometimes shaped with a cookie cutter.

In North America, biscuit refers to a small, savory cake similar to scones. In British English, biscuit refers to a small, baked, brittle cake, which is crisp, flat, and sweet. Biscuits can be sweet or savory. Biscuits do not spread much during baking and is mostly rolled thin and cut into uniform pieces.

Microwave with convection or OTG? 

Many people are often confused as to what to buy, whether a microwave convection oven or an OTG. Definitely if you are only interested in baking cakes, cookies and breads you can go for an OTG, in which the heating/baking is done with the heating of rods/elements inside it. If you want to bake 2 trays of cookies simultaneously, it is better to go for any model with 36 litres or more capacity. But mind you, you wouldn’t be able to reheat food in an OTG.

Microwave gets heated through heat waves. The convection ovens will help in baking and grilling and moreover you can use it to cook and reheat food. 

For preheating the OTG, you need to heat both the rods at the prescribed temperature for atleast 10-12 minutes. 

The bottom rod is ON indicates the BAKE mode and the top rod ON indicates the GRILL mode. Generally cakes, cookies, pizzas and others should be baked in the BAKE mode and the GRILL mode can be switched on during the last 2-3 minutes for getting a brown crust. 

Breads can be baked with both the rods ON and it would be advisable to cover the top with an aluminum foil during the initial 20-25 minutes of baking and then remove the foil and bake till the top is golden in colour. Or alternatively, bake without the foil with only the bottom rod ON for the first 20-25 minutes and then with both rods ON for the next 10 minutes or more. You can try and decide what works best for you in your oven.

You can use aluminium, silicone or glass moulds in your OTG as well as in microwave in the convection mode.

What are the things to be taken into consideration while baking cookies?

Few points to be kept in mind are as follows:

• Always use fresh ingredients. Flour, cocoa powder, essence, extracts, baking powder, baking soda, eggs, butter everything should be of good quality and fresh. Buy good quality choco chips so that it doesn’t melt while baking cookies.
• Every ingredient should be at room temperature. Butter should be soft and not melted. Allow butter to soften at room temperature and do not microwave it to soften faster.
• Use proper measuring cups or weighing scale to measure the ingredients. It is better to rely on weighing scale than measuring cups.
• Always prefer to use butter/ghee (clarified butter) instead of margarine .
• Eggs add richness and gives structure to the cookies. Use eggs that are stored at room temperature.
• Eggs can be replaced in a recipe by using flax gel. 
  • Flax gel: Take 1 tablespoon flax seeds and grind them into a coarse powder. Add around 4 tablespoon hot water into it and stir well. Keep it aside for 6-7 minutes. They will turn into a slimy and gel like solution. Strain it using a soft muslin cloth. This clear gel will resemble an egg white. Use 2 tablespoon of it as an egg replacement. 
  

  

  
• Always preheat the oven for atleast 10-12 minutes at the prescribed temperature.
• Always line the baking tray with parchment paper before you place the cookies on them. This prevents the cookie from spreading too much.
• The cookie trays are of different types and each type yields a different cookie in terms of browning and texture.

1. Aluminium sheets: They are most ideal as they reflect heat and helps in even baking and uniform browning. 
2. Insulated sheets: Cookies take more time to bake, will be light and pale coloured and do not brown much.
3. Nonstick dark sheets: This makes the cookie spread less and gives a harder and browner cookie.

• Trays lined with aluminium foil tend to make the cookies turn more brown and harder at the base.
• Never place your shaped cookies on a hot tray. The tray should be at room temperature. 
• Always leave space between two cookies, so that they get enough space for spreading.
• Place the tray always on the middle rack of the oven.
• If using more than one tray while baking, remember to interchange the lower layer tray with the upper layer tray during midway of the bake.
• Do not open the oven door while baking as this will reduce the oven temperature drastically.
• Use fresh baking soda and baking powder as per the recipe and both these cannot be used interchangeably. I will soon post another article on the difference between baking soda and baking powder 🙂
• Always cream the sugar and butter first. This can be done using a hand whisk or hand/stand mixer. It is not needed to beat it too much like we do for cakes to incorporate air, or else the cookies will spread too much.
• The dry ingredients should be just combined with the butter and sugar so that they come together. Do not knead hard. Be very gentle with the dough. Or else the cookies will be quite hard.
• The texture of the cookies depends a bit on the type of sugar used. Powdered sugar gives a smoother texture to the cookies as compared to granular sugar.
• If the cookie is too thick, it will require more time to bake than thinner ones.
• For a crispier cookie, bake at around 150-160 degree Celsius for 15-16 minutes.
• For a chewy kind of cookies, with a crust on the top, bake at around 175-180 degree Celsius for 10-12 minutes.
• Whole wheat and multigrain cookies need more baking time as compared to ones with all purpose flour. 
• If the dough is too soft, it can be refrigerated for few minutes and then shaped.
• If the dough is too hard and dry, sprinkle few teaspoons of milk or add a teaspoon of butter to make the dough loose. Do not add too much milk. This will make the cookie soggy.
• Excess cookie dough can be refrigerated for few days and used later. Frozen dough has a longer shelf life.
• While shaping the cookies, keep small amount of dough outside and the remaining dough can be refrigerated. 
• Cookies can be either rolled on a lightly dusted surface and cut using cookie cutters or simply pinch little dough and flatten it in your palm and shape them. If the dough tends to break while rolling, spread the dough between 2 layers of parchment paper and then roll it using a rolling pin.
• Incase you are making cookies after slicing the dough, it is advisable to refrigerate the dough after rolling it like a log and wrapping it in cling film for atleast 1-2 hours. Use a sharp knife and slice them into uniformly thick pieces say of 1/4 inch thickness. 

• Big cookies can be made by scooping the same amount of dough using an icecream scoop. Same size cookies will ensure uniform baking.
• Be creative, use whatever tools you see in  your kitchen to make impressions on your cookies. Be it grater, satay sticks, tooth picks, forks, piping nozzles, cookie cutters etc. Search your kid’s toys.. you never know, you shall get some mould or cutter or shaper or some textured impressions there.

• Some more tools required for cookie baking:
• At times, due to high temperature settings, the cookies will brown faster, but the inside will not be baked fully. This results in the cookies getting soft and soggy after cooling. In such case, bake it for few more minutes at a low temperature.
• Do not over bake your cookies, or else it will turn quite hard after cooling down. Remember that cookies will be soft when you take them out of the oven, it will eventually harden after cooling.
• Every oven behaves differently, so adjust the temperature and timings accordingly. You know your oven better than anyone else. So, you are the best judge. Keep trying till you become perfect. Do not give up after 1-2 failures.
• After taking the tray out of the oven, let the cookies remain in the tray for some time say around 4-5 minutes.
• Transfer the cookies from the tray to the cooling rack very gently using a flat spoon or spatula.
• Remember to cool the cookies on a wire rack till it is fully cooled. Else cookies will become limp and soft. In that case, bake again for few minutes say 5-8 minutes at a low temperature say around 130-150 degree Celsius.
• Always store the cookies in an airtight container. Tins and glass jars are better than plastic containers.
• Also do not keep different flavoured cookies together in the same tin. The flavours will mix with each other and the cookies will fail to retain their identity.
• Also, keeping a bread slice along with your cookies in the jar helps to retain the freshness and crunchiness of the cookies for a longer time.

I have written almost all that I remembered. Please feel free to share your inputs and suggestions too. Hoping that these tips will be useful to atleast some of you. Thanks for your time and patience to read through the whole article. I surely enjoyed writing this one. Happy cookie baking.