From chocolate chip to oatmeal raisin, no dessert satisfies quite the way that cookies do. They're easy to make, serve a crowd, and there are so many iterations to choose from. Using high-quality ingredients and a reliable recipe are two ways to ensure a delicious cookie—but there's something else you should do to take the dessert to the next level: refrigerate the dough.
Flour contains naturally-occurring enzymes, which break down as the dough chills, leading to increased browning. The sugar in the dough absorbs the moisture from the flour, causing the cookie to brown and caramelize. Refrigerating the dough allows the flour to fully hydrate and helps to make the cookie dough firmer.
Firm dough prevents the cookies from spreading too much, which is why chilling the dough is a crucial step for cut-out and rolled cookies. "The colder and more solid the fat is, the less the cookie will spread," says food stylist and recipe developer Caitlin Haught Brown.
More Flavor
Chilling the dough also improves the way your cookies taste. "In terms of flavor, you'll notice more depth of flavor from the vanilla and the sugar will taste sweeter," says Haught Brown. "In terms of texture, chilled cookie dough produces a more evenly golden-brown cookie with a crisper edge and chewier center."
How Long to Refrigerate Cookie Dough
As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes). Don't let it get too warm or you'll defeat the purpose of chilling the dough all together.
How to Refrigerate Cookie Dough
To make forming the chilled cookie dough more manageable, pre-portion it by scooping balls of dough into individual cookies, placing them on a sheet pan or in a resealable bag, chilling, and then baking right away.
When Not to Refrigerate Cookie Dough
There are some cases where you should avoid chilling cookie dough. For example, the dough for Alexis's Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies shouldn't be refrigerated, since the goal of this recipe is to create super thin, crispy cookies that spread significantly when baking. Refrigerating the dough would prevent these cookies from spreading the way they're intended to.
"A tuile cookie, where the appeal is based in the thinness or lacy qualities, is another example when you should bake the cookie dough immediately," says baker and food stylist Jason Schreiber. Additionally, if you're making a super soft peanut butter cookie or a cakey snickerdoodle, you may not want to refrigerate the dough before baking.
Chilling cookie dough before baking solidifies the fat in the cookies. As the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt than room-temperature fat. And the longer the fat remains solid, the less cookies spread. In addition, the sugar in the dough gradually absorbs liquid.
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. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.
Chilling your cookie dough in the refrigerator after mixing it allows the flour to hydrate and gives the other ingredients time to blend, resulting in a richer, more well-rounded flavor profile.
Refrigerating the dough will give it more structure so the cookies spread less and hold their fork marks through baking. Cooling the dough also ensures that all of the ingredients are the same temperature: they'll bake more evenly and the flavors will meld beautifully. Heat oven to 375°F.
cookie | TikTok. Scooping then chilling your cookie dough for at least. 2 hours before baking. As you can see, this primarily affects spread and height, both of which significantly contribute to texture.
As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes).
Sure, you can skip the chilling step and bake the dough right away, but doing so runs the risk of flat disks with dry edges and a brittle texture; a far cry for the plush, chewy cookies with fudge-like centers we all crave.
Cool down your dough for a tastier, chewier cookie.
There's a few reasons why, but one important part is it gives the butter in your dough a chance to firm up before baking. The colder your dough is before it heads into the oven, the less it will spread during baking, which makes for loftier cookies.
Here's what our Test Kitchen recommends when quickly chilling cookie dough in the freezer: Place the cookie dough in the freezer for one-quarter of the recommended refrigerator time. The dough can be wrapped in plastic, scooped into balls for baking on a cookie sheet, or left in the mixing bowl, covered.
It comes down to personal preference—if you prefer crispier edges and a soft interior, plus deep vanilla and caramel notes, we recommend using refrigerated cookie dough that's been chilled at least overnight. However, the first no-chill batch had a nice, soft texture and was rich with flavor.
Parchment paper: Scoop the cookie dough onto a sheet of parchment paper and use the paper to wrap the dough into a ball. Place your parchment papered dough into your labeled container. You can store it in the fridge for up to 4 days or the freezer for up to 3 months.
The fridge constantly circulates cool air to keep things cold, but this will also result in drying out your dough. (There are some recipes that call for chilled dough and typically the recipe will have been created to account for this.)
The most important part of today's recipe? Chill your cookie dough! The dough is extremely soft due to the creamy peanut butter, eggs, and butter and if it's not cold going into the oven, the cookies will spread all over your baking sheet.
So it looks like that there are utilitarian reasons for the cross-hatching—to allow for even cooking—but it might have been passed along for nearly a hundred years for primarily aesthetic reasons, where the cross-hatching is more to identify the cookies as peanut butter ones, rather than to cook them well.
Unless you want extra-crispy cookies, avoid overmixing your dough. "Overmixing your dough will result in flatter, crispier cookies," Cowan said. If you overmix, you will end up aerating (adding air to) the dough, which causes the cookies to rise and then fall, leaving you with flat cookies.
That's right. The composition of your cookies will come out differently after refrigeration because of the butter in the dough. "When your cookie dough is not refrigerated, the butter is at room temperature. Therefore the heat from the oven reacts with the butter quickly, making it spread thinner," says Epperson.
Introduction: My name is Barbera Armstrong, I am a lovely, delightful, cooperative, funny, enchanting, vivacious, tender person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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