Orange Cookies Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to chewy cookies? ›

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.

White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies. Why use melted butter? Melted butter creates cookies with a different texture compared to cookies made with softened or creamed butter. When butter is melted, it coats the flour more evenly, resulting in cookies that are chewier and denser.

Add the ingredients to the bowl, and begin beating using a metal whisk. Hold the whisk at an angle (roughly 45 degrees) to the bowl and spin your wrist in a circular motion, lifting the whisk up and out of the mixture then bringing it back down to the bottom of the bowl.

Light corn syrup is another ingredient that you can add to cookie dough that will help it stay softer longer. The corn syrup you buy at the grocery store is not the high-fructose corn syrup that soft drinks are made with; it's a sugar that is liquid at room temperature and helps other sugars say liquid at high heat.

Room temperature butter is just the right consistency to incorporate air when it's creamed with sugar. These trapped air pockets result in risen, fluffy cookies. If the butter is any warmer, it won't incorporate enough air and your cookies will have less rise.

For soft cookies, use: Brown sugar, as it has a high moisture content and retains moisture better than white sugar. Also, when combined with eggs, brown sugar can prevent spreading (taller cookies tend to be softer and fluffier). Shortening instead of butter or in addition to butter.

Not Enough Flour

Our cookies were brittle and greasy and cooked much faster than the other dough balls on the sheet. Though the culprit is usually a flour deficit, butter could also be to blame for this problem. Adding too soft or slightly melted butter to the dough can also result in flat cookies.

Use Melted Butter

If the goal is a chewy cookie, then you absolutely need to be using melted butter. The technique of creaming softened butter and sugar together is often used for making cakes. And for good reason! The process of creaming incorporates air into the butter which results in a more airy and cakey cookie.

Beating means agitating an ingredient or mixture vigorously using either a whisk, fork, wooden spoon or electric whisk.

What happens if you add too much flour to cookies? ›

In excess amounts, it sucks up the moisture from other ingredients like milk, eggs, and butter, leaving you with a drier, fluffier cookie whose texture feels almost bread-like. And if you've ever ended up with cookies that look like hard scoops of brown ice cream, you know the problem all too well.

The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.

Keep Them Sealed

The key to keeping cookies fresh and soft is to seal them in an airtight container, like a resealable freezer bag. And here's a nifty little trick: add a piece of bread to the bag.

Hard cookies: you are over mixing, baking too long, baking at too high a temperature, or some combination of these. Cakey cookies: not enough brown sugar, too much or too little egg, too much flour, maybe you used baking powder instead of baking soda?

According to The Kitchn, this occurs when you over-mix the dough. Mixing the dough naturally causes gluten to develop in the flour, and while you do need a good amount of gluten to give your cookies structure, too much of it will result in hard cookies.