Cookies Spread Too Much

Hi --

The thread on baking sheets makes me think I can get some advice here.

I've been having troubles with my toll-house recipe chocolate chip cookeis and snickerdoodles "spreading" too much for several years. (I only bake at Christmas, so this isn't so drastic as it sounds).

I'd thought maybe butter nowadays has a higher milk content or soemthing, and I should try to adjust the flour upwards to compensate. But the cookiesheet thread suggests a couple more possibilities.

We use air-cushioned pans. Do they not heat-up quick enough, and let the butter melt before the flour, sugar, and eggs start to "set"? Can this be why my cookies are too flat?

We bought a box of frozen, unbaked cookies from some school fundraiser and we don't have trouble with these. But maybe they're made with shortening instead of butter, or baking them from frozen mitigates the problem.

Any ideas??

t
Reply to
Thomas R. Leith
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I read an article several years ago that suggest the culprit could be butter than has sat at room temperature too long. This article suggested no more than 10 minutes. I have a powerful Kenwood so I usually use butter right from the refrigerator for cookies, and have never had a problem with spreading.

Karen

Reply to
Karen

You are on the right track. While there are several factors that can influence the spread of cookies, the profile of the fat is the most likely cause of your problem. Butter has a relatively low melting point and melts sharply. It goes from solid to liquid in a flash. Hydrogenated vegetable shortening melts at a higher temperature and not as sharply as butter. The cookies you bought most likely were made with solid vegetable shortening (like Crisco).

I use half butter, half shortening in my toll-house cookies. I bake them on standard aluminum cookie sheets lined with parchment. They don't spread much. I also make up large batches of the dough, make up the cookies, freeze them individually, and then bag the frozen, raw cookies. When I want a few cookies, I take a few from the freezer and bake them from the frozen state, adding about 5 minutes to the normal baking time. I have noticed that these cookies spread even less than the ones baked from the unfrozen dough.

I would first try changing the fat. If that isn't satisfactory, try new baking sheets. You also might want to reduce the temperature 25 degrees with the insulated baking sheets to delay the melting of the butter in the dough. Freezing the dough shouldn't be necessary but can be considered as a convenience.

Reply to
Vox Humana

I think I mentioned (here or somewhere else) about the article in Fine Cooking or Cook's Illustrated. They did say that air-cushioned or insulated pans do tend to cause the butter to melt out of cookies.

If you do have some regular (or even non-stick) baking sheets, there's no harm in trying them for at least one batch. They're fairly cheap, too, so you can always pick up one that could double as a jelly-roll pan if they don't work out for cookies.

The fat could also be the cause. Or perhaps your cookie dough is too warm. I would first try changing cookie sheets. Then if that doesn't work, try chilling the dough a bit before baking. If that still doesn't work, try substituting some of the butter with shortening. Personally, I only like using butter for baked goods so I would suffer through flat, spread-out cookies rather than use shortening, but that's just me :-).

rona

Reply to
Rona Yuthasastrakosol

As I've posted before, changing the fat isn't necessary. You can easily use all-butter and have minimal spread, simply by increasing the egg proportion slightly. The more eggs you have, the softer the cookies become. It's possible to tune the recipe for almost any desired flatness and crispness simply by adjusting the egg ratio. Changing the fat is another way to achieve the same end, but there's always a flavour compromise using that approach.

Certainly it's best that your dough be as cool as possible when the cookies hit the oven, but I haven't found freezing it to be necessary. The only thing you want to avoid is that the butter actually melt before the cookies are in the oven.

Again, remember that the Toll House recipe was designed to produce flat, crisp cookies, so if you're following that recipe to the letter, you're getting the result you should expect. It's necessary to alter the recipe to get less flat cookies.

Reply to
Alex Rast

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to try using plain-old cookie sheets with parchment paper & cooking the dough from "referigerator cold". I'll post a post here about how it turns out...

t
Reply to
Thomas R. Leith

Tom,

I was in the same position as you about a year ago, and post a similar question to the newsgroup. I got good suggestions from Vox Humana concerning the ratio of butter to Crisco.

The simple switch of substituting some of the butter with butter flavored Crisco solves most of the problem. I have tried ratios of 25:75, 50:50 and

75:25 butter to shortening. I prefer something around 50:50 (although I keep meaning to try 60:40). I have tried both plain cookie sheets and the air-envelope sheets. The main difference being a slightly more crispy bottom with the standard cookie sheet. The parchment paper is nice, in keeping the cookie sheet clean. I have not tried baking cold dough or frozen dough.

One other suggestion from Vox Humana was eggs. I have tried experimenting with the amount of yolk versus egg white. However, I have not tried it enough to make any firm conclusions. I have gone to rather small eggs, to get rid of that "fluffy" mouth feel that you get with too much egg. I think another big issue could be the type of oven that you use. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has a "forced-air" oven. It would seem that this type of oven may give a cookie closer to a high-end commercial cookie ( I am thinking of something like Blue Chip Cookies). What bake temp are you using? I have tried 375F down to 350F, varying the time. Prefer about 10 minutes at 360F in a standard electric oven (middle rack).

My day job is that of a paint chemist (develop paint formulas for food, beer & beverage cans). Maybe I am bringing my day time experimentation home ...

Good luck,

Alton

Reply to
Alton B. Wilson

"Thomas R. Leith" wrote in news:lw2Cb.10232$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net:

I would like to suggest that you try different flour. A cake flour with cold butter will give you a fluffy puffy cookie. Shortening and all purpose flour will give you a thin and crispier cookie. High glutem bread flour or bread machine flour with melted butter will give you a nice chewy cookie. The melted butter will help develop the glutens before baking. A combination of cake and some bread (high gluten), with clearified butter will tend to give a puffier chewy cookie.

Jean-Scott

Reply to
Jean-Scott

I want to thank you for (probably) solving my problem! I've been so frustrated since I moved to a high-altitude area (6100') that my cookies *never* come out right, unless I use commercial frozen dough. I thought it was the altitude ... then I realized that we got some of those air-insulated cookie sheets when we moved! I'm going shopping for *normal* cookie sheets.

Today I tried making cinnamon chip cookies for the holidays ... ugh ... they spread all over the pan and the oven bottom into one big mess. I scraped the cookie sheets and told everyone it was a cinnamon crisp topping for ice cream! (Tasted fine, just looked horrid!)

Angel

Reply to
Angel

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