How to Make NaNa's Sand Tarts Cookie {Recipe} (2024)

FAQs

How do you make cookies thick and not flat? ›

A low proportion of sugar relative to flour reduces spread, keeping the cookies thick. A high proportion of mix-ins helps thicken the dough. Blending chocolate chip styles creates a more dynamic flavor. Overnight refrigeration hydrates the flour, again helping the cookies stay thick.

Eggs bind the ingredients and make for moist, chewy cookies. Adding too many eggs can result in gummy, cake-like cookies. Adding too few eggs can result in dry, crumbly cookies. Beat each one in separately and thoroughly.

Butter contributes milk solids and water to a cookie, both of which soften it. Brown sugar contributes molasses – again, a softener. Using lower-moisture sugar (granulated) and fat (vegetable shortening), plus a longer, slower bake than normal, produces light, crunchy cookies.

For example, you can add a little more flour, butter, or any other dry ingredients called for in the recipe. This can help dilute the extra sugar and bring the flavors back into balance [1]. Double the recipe: Another option is to double the rest of the recipe, excluding the sugar.

The Problem: Incorrectly Measured Ingredients

Sugar sucks up liquid, and when those cookies bake, it'll release the liquid and cause the cookies to spread out. If you use too much butter, the cookies will end up flat and greasy.

Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

What happens when you bake without brown sugar? To be succinct, the resulting baked good could be slightly drier or more crisp. Without the excess moisture from the molasses in the brown sugar, the final cookie won't be as chewy and the final bread might be drier.

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

Softened butter and melted butter are not the same. Using melted butter will change the texture of whatever you're baking. If you only want the butter to soften for spreading, microwave it on the Defrost setting (30%) in 5-second increments until it's softened as desired.

How do I make my cookies chewy instead of crunchy? ›

This is a common baking mistake, and it's easily fixable. Adding too much sugar to cookie dough can result in a number of issues, such as making the dough too sticky, causing it to spread too much during baking, and making the final product overly sweet.

Check Your Cookie Dough's Consistency

After mixing your ingredients (sugar, flour, water, etc.), check that the consistency of your dough isn't: Tough – For rolled cookies, your dough can become “tough” by adding too much flour to your pin or counter before rolling it out.

Overmixing the dough: Overmixing can lead to tough and dense cookies. It's essential to mix the ingredients just until they come together to avoid developing too much gluten.

If all you have on hand is foil and you don't like thin and crispy cookies, try chilling your dough before baking to prevent excess spreading — or just skip the lining altogether and bake them on an ungreased sheet pan. A nonstick silicone cookie mat made the best cookies of all the tests I tried.

Too much sugar and not enough flour could lead to flat cookies. If your cookie recipe calls for a high ratio of white sugar, it's likely that your cookies will turn out flat.