Most cookie dough spreads while baking as the fat melts because the formula is designed for this to happen. However, some recipes don’t spread, so they require that you flatten the dough before baking. Otherwise, you will have cookies that are puffy and unevenly cooked.
Or in some cases, the cookie recipe will require you to flatten the cookies before baking if they haven’t been designed to spread naturally. If you reduce the amount of butter or oil in a recipe, your cookies won’t spread as much. If you add too much flour, your cookies won’t spread as much.
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.
Do you cut cookies before or after baking? Cut your cookie dough before baking it. Once the cookies are baked, it’ll be more difficult to get a clean cut.
Pat the dough into a square atop the layer of sugar. Sprinkle the top with additional sugar. Chill the dough, then cut it into cubes and position them on a baking sheet. If your recipe calls for flattening the dough balls with the bottom of a drinking glass, go ahead and do so; they’ll still “round up” as they bake.
Finally, cookies will also flatten if placed and baked on hot cookie sheets. Keep it cool to start with. How to Fix it: If too-soft butter was the culprit, try refrigerating cookie dough for 1 to 2 hours before baking. If too-little flour was the issue, try adding an additional 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour to the dough.
If you want a flatter cookie, eliminate 1 egg and cut back the flour to 2 cups. If you like a really crunchy cookie, add another egg white because it helps to dry out baked goods. If you prefer a moist and chewy cookie, eliminate one egg white and add 2 TBSP of milk.
There’s no one rule for cookie dough consistency because it varies by recipe and final baked cookie. However, your dough should be stiff enough to scoop. If the recipe calls for rolled balls, then the dough needs to be more rigid so you can handle it and form it a ball that will maintain its shape.
If you’re in the middle of baking a batch and the cookies still aren’t spreading, remove them from the oven, and use a spoon to slightly flatten them out before returning them to the oven.
Cookies spread because the fat in the cookie dough melts in the oven. If there isn’t enough flour to hold that melted fat, the cookies will over-spread. Spoon and level that flour or, better yet, weigh your flour.
Adding too much flour to your counter and rolling pin can make your cookies tough—”that’s a big no-no,” according to Catherine. To make sure you have the most tender cookies possible, Catherine recommends rolling out cookie dough between two sheets of very lightly floured waxed paper.
Roll or scoop the cookies into balls. If your recipe calls for chilling the dough beforehand, do that. It will make the dough easier to handle.
Chilling the dough is a key step in making sugar cookies, especially when you’re making cut-outs. Even if you’re tight on time, make sure to get the dough in the fridge, or even the freezer, even if it’s only for a little while. Skip this step, and the dough will be sticky, and much harder to work with.
Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don’t overdo it when you’re creaming together the butter and sugar.
Greased cookie sheets promote spreading. Giving your cookies something with friction to cling onto, so to speak—like an ungreased baking sheet or one lined with parchment or Silpat—can slow the spreading. A greased sheet just encourages hot, melting cookie dough to run further.
9 Tips to Remember
- Use Real Butter and Keep It Cool. The low melting point of butter may be what makes your cookies flat.
- Use Shortening.
- Chill Dough Twice.
- Use Parchment Paper or a Silicone Liner.
- Measure Precisely.
- Use Fresh Baking Soda.
- Use Optional Add-Ins.
- Buy an Oven Thermometer.
Chilling cookie dough
- Chilling cookie dough for just 30 minutes makes a big difference. The cookies pictured above are the same size, weight-wise.
- The longer you chill cookie dough, the smaller the changes become.
- Over time, chilling cookie dough produces cookies with darker color and more pronounced flavor.
What are the primary causes of this? The steam and other hot gasses that were puffing the cookies up either escapes or condenses. Without heat to create more steam, the cookies deflate. You get exactly the same effect with bread, quiches, and other baked goods.
Rest the Dough A secret baker’s trick is to rest your cookie dough in the fridge. You can rest it for at least an hour, which will evaporate some of the water and increase the sugar content, helping to keep your cookies chewy. The longer you allow your dough to rest in the fridge, the chewier your cookies will be.
How to Fix Cakey Cookies
- Don’t Chill Your Cookies.
- Use Melted Butter instead of Room Temperature Butter.
- Use Less Flour.
- Don’t Beat the Butter and Sugar Too Much.
- Add Baking Soda.
- Decrease Baking Powder.
- Drop the Pan on the Counter a Few Times after Baking.
- Decrease the Amount of Eggs.
When cookies don’t spread in the oven, it’s either because the dough was too dry or too cold. Dry dough doesn’t have enough moisture or fat in it to spread out, so it sets in that shape. Dough that’s too cold will start to firm up before the butter has a chance to melt completely.
Most cookies are baked at a fairly high temperature for a short time. Why would you double-pan a batch of cookies? To prevent burning the bottoms of the cookies.
The ideal thickness to roll out your sugar cookie dough is about 1/4″–that way, they’ll be tough enough to be handled and decorated, but thin enough to stay a little crunchy.
Lining a baking sheet when making cookies: Not only will the parchment help cookies bake more evenly, the non-stick quality also helps prevent them from cracking or breaking when lifting them off the sheet. Decorating home-baked goods: Parchment paper makes the perfect wrapper for baked goods.
Chill at least 1 hour or overnight.
The most common reason why your cookies don’t spread is that you’ve added too much flour. Adding more dry ingredients than the recipe calls for can result in a dough that is too stiff. Moisture and fat in the dough are soaked up by the excessive amount of flour which takes away its ability to spread.
How do you flatten dough evenly?
Instead, start by placing the pin in the middle of the dough. Roll halfway away and halfway toward you: Rather than rolling the pin back and forth, each roll should begin in the center, then pressing the dough firmly, roll away from your body. Return back to the center, and roll the pin toward yourself.
Roll dough between sheets of parchment or waxed paper
Rather than roll dough on a floured surface, roll it between sheets of non-stick parchment or waxed paper. Adding extra flour to dough as a result of rolling can make cookies tough.
Place two equal-sized sheets of parchment paper underneath and above the dough, making a kind of dough sandwich. Then roll out with your rolling pin, keeping the dough sandwiched between the two parchment sheets.
If your oven is too hot, the fat melts faster than the cookie is able to set, and you end up with pancake cookies. Always preheat your oven and invest in a good oven thermometer. Even new ovens can be incorrectly calibrated, so check the actual temperature every time you put a pan in the oven.
Generally for 1 or 2-inch-deep pans, you will fill them 1/2 full of batter. For pans that are 3 or 4-inch-deep, the batter needs to be about 2/3 full.
Your cookies might not be bad or anything, but they might just be puffier than they should be. If you want to get things right, then try to make a new batch of dough that uses the specific number of eggs that is called for in the recipe. You should have cookies that turn out much closer to what you expect that way.
Not Enough Flour
If your cookies are flat, brown, crispy, and possibly even a bit lacy around the edges, that means you need to add flour to your dough for the next batch. Our cookies were brittle and greasy and cooked much faster than the other dough balls on the sheet.
Water vapor escaping from the dough in combination with the carbon dioxide released by our baking soda is ultimately what makes our cookies light and airy.
Baking powder simply adds carbon dioxide to the equation, providing a more forceful pressure that encourages a dough to spread up and out. Without the well-developed elasticity of a bread dough, the strands of gluten in cookies would sooner snap than stretch, cracking along the surface.
Cookie chemistry: We’re taking a 180° turn from our crunchy cookies, substituting higher-moisture brown sugar and butter for their lower-moisture counterparts: granulated sugar and vegetable shortening. That, plus a shortened baking time, yields a cookie that’s soft and chewy all the way through.
Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you’re more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies.
“When your dough is refrigerated, the butter hardens. So when you bake them, they spread less and hold their shape better,” adds Epperson. “Which means a better likelihood of a soft, chewy cookie in the center.” So chilling the dough before baking means fluffier cookies with better consistency.
Ripening is just a fancy term for resting cookie dough in the fridge before baking it. Some recipes call for a quick chilling, while others recommend up to 72 hours of resting before baking them. This resting time does two crucial things for cookies. First, it allows the fat in the cookies to chill and firm up.
Baking soda is generally used in recipes that contain an acidic ingredient such as vinegar, sour cream or citrus. Tip: For recipes that call for baking soda, work quickly and bake immediately after mixing, or the reaction will cease and your cookies will fall flat.
While brown sugar keeps your cookies moist and soft, white sugar and corn syrup will help your cookies spread and crisp in the oven. Using more white sugar in your cookies will result in a crispier end product. To achieve a crispy cookie, skip the rest in the fridge.
Often, these mixing methods are categorized by the baked item you are making, and the degree of mixing used to ensure the best baked good possible.
There are three major mixing methods used in baking which consist of:
- The Muffin Method.
- The Biscuit Method.
- The Creaming Method.
Why Are My Cookies Flat? Mistake: When cookies turn out flat, the bad guy is often butter that is too soft or even melted. This makes cookies spread. The other culprit is too little flour—don’t hold back and make sure you master measuring.
Chocolate chip cookies made with softened butter vs melted butter. In terms of flavor and texture, there’s no difference.
If you want a flatter cookie, eliminate 1 egg and cut back the flour to 2 cups. If you like a really crunchy cookie, add another egg white because it helps to dry out baked goods. If you prefer a moist and chewy cookie, eliminate one egg white and add 2 TBSP of milk.