Cookie Baking Tips

We did the research (and all the taste testing!) to get one step closer to the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Here are all of our best cookie baking tips.

One thing that happened when I entered parenthood: I wanted to be the mom with the best chocolate chip cookies.

Okay, let’s step aside and not get too carried away. But when I talk about sweets, I’m all in.

Psst: if you love the photos in this blog post, be sure to check out Lisa Renault – she’s our family photographer and absolutely phenomenal at what she does!

I was feeling a little like Monica on the episode of FRIENDS, “The One With Phoebe’s Cookies.” Monica just wanted to be the mom with the perfect chocolate chip cookies – and that was me. My goal was to just have that one, surefire recipe for the perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies.

And I finally did it. Here are a few things that I learned:

My Very Best Cookie Baking Tips

The Anatomy of a Chocolate Chip Cookie

To start, I wanted to break down the anatomy of a chocolate chip cookie. This way, I could provide my best baking tips while developing (and perfecting!) my cookie recipe.

Age old question: what makes up a chocolate chip cookie?

Good news is that the components of a chocolate chip cookie aren’t too complicated. In fact, you’ll most likely find the ingredients already sitting in your pantry and fridge:

Dry Ingredients

The first part to any baked good is its dry ingredients to form the structure of the finished dessert. In a chocolate chip cookie recipe, you’ll often find:

• Flour
• Baking soda

The Fat

Fat in baking (and for the sake of this article, in cookies), not only provides a boost of taste in your baked good, but it also acts as a leavening agent and helps with texture.

Fats that have been known to be commonly used for chocolate chip cookies are:

• Butter
• Shortening
• Oil

What Do Eggs do in Cookies?

Eggs are a vital component to baking cookies. They help with building the structure of the cookie, offering moisture, protein, and fat.

Eggs also act as a leavening agent. Normally, putting an extra egg in a cookie recipe will result in a chewier cookie.

How do I Make Chewy Instead of Crunchy?

This is what it really all comes down to: texture, texture, TEXTURE!

The ingredients that determine your cookie’s structure and texture are the sugars: more specifically, brown sugar and granulated sugar.

If you’re all about a chewy cookie, then we recommend being heavy-handed on the brown sugar. If you’re more on the crunchy side, then your ratio should favour the granulated sugar.

Should You Separate the Ingredients?

Absolutely. When baking, preparing dry and wet ingredients separately allows even distribution, and preventing clumpy batter.

In my chocolate chip cookie recipe, I do make everything in one bowl (I’m all about that since we have a smaller kitchen – it means less dishes!), but I start with the wet ingredients, then move forward with the dry ingredients.

The Chocolate Lowdown

When it comes to cookie baking tips, we couldn’t leave this part out! What’s a chocolate chip cookie without… well, the chocolate?!

I’ve never been too overly picky with chocolate chips. I realize that lots of recipes call for “high quality chocolate chips” but sometimes, when you’re in a rush (or on a budget), a no-name brand can do the trick.

Of course, it is important to note that there is a difference between chocolate chips and baking chocolate. According to this article on Food Network, chocolate chips “are designed to hold their shape when stirred into a batter or dough […]” whereas baking chocolate “[…] is made to be chopped and melted to be used in baking.”

How do you like your chocolate chip cookies? Chewier? More chocolate chips? Less? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!