When your cookies turn out flat and crispy it's because you didn't use enough flour.
Not using enough flour in your cookie dough can make your cookies turn out flat and crispy.
Sometimes cookies turn out flat and crispy or flat and crunchy because your oven is too hot too.
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.
When you're making cookies you can mix butter and shortening in your cookies.
Mixing both butter and shortening in a cookie recipe, you will get the wonderful flavor of butter, while the shortening will keep the cookies from spreading too flat.
The best shortening for cookies is Crisco All Vegetable Shortening.
Cookies that are made with butter spread more and are flatter and crisper if baked long enough.
However, they are more flavorful than cookies made with shortening.
Cookies made with shortening bake up taller and are more tender, but aren't as flavorful.
Egg Yolk acts as a binder in the cookie dough.
Adding egg yolks to the cookies yields a super tender, chewy cookie.
The moisture content of the cookie is what gives cookies a chewy texture.
Any cookie recipes that contain a lot of butter, brown sugar or egg yolks are going to yield soft and chewy cookies, because those ingredients add moisture and retain it for a longer amount of time.
For Chewy Cookies you want to use brown sugar instead of white sugar as brown sugar keeps more moisture in cookies.
If you forgot to put baking soda in your cookies the cookies will turn out dense.
The use of baking soda is a very important ingredient when making cookies.
Without baking soda, your cookies would not be soft and fluffy and both their taste and their texture would suffer.
The type of sugar and the amount of sugar you use in cookies is what determines the moisture of a cookie.
While white sugar can be used in cookies the brown sugar when used to make cookies makes the cookies more moist.
Molasses attracts moisture, so that helps your cookies stay moist.
When you put too much baking soda in cookies it makes the cookies turn out cakey and not chewy.
This happens because baking soda also introduces carbon dioxide, or air, to the dough.
You should sift flour for cookies if you want to break up any lumps which gives you a more accurate measurement of the flour.
However sifting flours is not necessary or required for making cookies unless you want too.
Putting your flour through a sifter will break up any lumps in the flour, which means you can get a more accurate measurement.
Sifted flour is much lighter than unsifted flour and is easier to mix into other ingredients when making batters and doughs.
For desserts that are chewy or crisp like cookies, sifting flour isn't a must.
The purpose of sifting flour through a sieve or sifter helps break up clumps and aerates the ingredients.
In the past, sifted flour also allowed for more accurate measuring results.
Baking soda is best when you want to make chewy cookies while baking powder is better for when you wan to make light and airy cookies.
Baking soda reacts to the acid in a recipe, while baking powder reacts to liquid and heat.
Baking soda changes the texture of baked goods by causing a batter or dough to spread, while baking powder produces light, fluffy texture.
When baking cookies you should bake the cookies on the middle rack.
When baking cookies you should heat from the bottom but bake the cookies on the center rack.
Place a thermometer inside the oven to check that the temperature is accurate--home ovens can be off by 50 degrees or more, making a huge difference for cookies.
350 degrees Fahrenheit is a good temp for chocolate chip cookies for example.
Generally, cookies are baked in a moderate oven — 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) — for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the cookie.
For chewy cookies, allow them to cool on the baking sheet for 3 to 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
For more even baking, position oven rack at the center of the oven and bake one sheet of cookies at a time.
If you prefer to bake two sheets, space racks so oven is divided into thirds and switch cookie sheets top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking.
Putting raw dough on cookie sheets still warm from the oven can cause them to begin spreading, leading to burnt edges.
Always allow baking sheets to cool completely before adding more batches.
To expedite cooling, rinse warm—but not hot—sheet under cold tap water.