If you’re baking your cookies at 325 degrees, you’ll need to bake them longer than you would at 350 degrees. This is because, as previously noted, the lower temperature of the oven will result in the cookies baking at a slower pace. Some sources say to bake cookies at 325 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.
Cookie temperatures fluctuate, with some recipes as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and a few as high as 425 degrees Fahrenheit, but most recipes land on 375 or 350 to evenly bake the entirety of the cookie.
Because the higher temperature causes the cookies to firm faster (aka set faster) and this prevents spreading. Cookies baked at 375 degrees F will have a thicker, chewier bottom.
HEAT oven to 350°F (or 325°F for nonstick cookie sheet). PLACE cookie dough rounds about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. BAKE 10 to 14 minutes or until light golden brown.
The short answer is, you can expect to bake cookies at 350 degrees F for between 8 to 12 minutes. That said, a lot needs to be put into consideration when determining how long to bake your cookies – the type of cookies, the size of the cookies, and the content in the dough.
However, the standard baking temperature for cookies is 350 degrees Fahrenheit. While 350 degrees F is standard, you can also bake cookies at 325 degrees F.
Keeping them on the sheet too long after baking can cause them to get hard or stick to the sheet. Cookies are done when they are firmly set and lightly browned. When you touch them lightly with your finger, almost no imprint will remain.
350° is the standard temp for a cookie, and it’s a great one. Your cookies will bake evenly and the outside will be done at the same time as the inside. Baking at 325° also results in an evenly baked cookie, but the slower cooking will help yield a chewier cookie.
LOWER THE TEMPERATURE
“When you bake at a lower temperature, you will get that perfect cookie with a soft center and crisp exterior,” she adds. Just make sure you increase baking time by a couple of minutes or you will end up with gooey underbaked cookies.
A low temperature and longer baking time yields crisper, thinner cookies; a higher temperature and shorter baking time makes softer, thicker cookies.
One of the most common reasons why cookies didn’t spread out in the oven is because you added too much flour. Cookies rely on the perfect ratio of butter to flour in order to spread just the right amount when baked. It’s very easy to over measure flour when using cup measurements.
Cookie chemistry: We’re taking a 180° turn from our crunchy cookies, substituting higher-moisture brown sugar and butter for their lower-moisture counterparts: granulated sugar and vegetable shortening. That, plus a shortened baking time, yields a cookie that’s soft and chewy all the way through.
Chilling cookie dough controls spread.
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.
Rest the Dough A secret baker’s trick is to rest your cookie dough in the fridge. You can rest it for at least an hour, which will evaporate some of the water and increase the sugar content, helping to keep your cookies chewy. The longer you allow your dough to rest in the fridge, the chewier your cookies will be.
Cookies should (almost) always be baked on the middle rack of the oven. The middle rack offers the most even heat and air circulation which helps cookies bake consistently.
For softer, chewier cookies, you will want to add much less granulated sugar, slightly more brown sugar, and a fair bit less butter. For cakey cookies, you will often be including even less butter and sugar.
Issues with cracking usually derive from the sugar coating, not enough or expired baking powder or baking soda, or the oven temperature isn’t hot enough. Solution: Granulated sugar is more effective at drying the surface than powdered sugar.
Moreover, the lower the oven temperature, the more evenly the cookie bakes, with less of a contrast between the edges and the center. In fact, when the oven temperature gets low enough (around 275°F (135°C) and below), you completely lose any contrast, producing a cookie that’s more or less homogenous across the board.
Place one baking sheet at a time onto center rack of preheated 350 degree F oven. Bake until cookies are golden around the edges, still have pale tops, and are soft in the center, about 8 to 10 minutes. (Do not overbake! They will firm up more during cooling.)
Most of the time, cookies need to cool for around five to ten minutes before they can be moved and consumed. But it’s not as much of a cut and dry answer as you may think.
Most cookies are still soft when done (they harden as they cool) and will continue to bake on the cookie sheet once removed from the oven. Remove cookies from the cookie sheet as soon as they are firm enough to transfer, using a spatula, to a cooling rack or paper towels to finish cooling.
Cookies spread because the fat in the cookie dough melts in the oven. If there isn’t enough flour to hold that melted fat, the cookies will over-spread. Spoon and level that flour or, better yet, weigh your flour. If your cookies are still spreading, add an extra 2 Tablespoons of flour to the cookie dough.
So long as they end up evenly flat, that is; squashing cookies haphazardly under your palm means they may bake and brown unevenly. Still, if you care deeply (or even casually) about the look of your cookies, you can take the flattening step as an opportunity for enhancement. The bottom of a glass works fine, it’s true.
Even heat created by the air circulating in convection yields the irresistible combination of crunchy and gooey – and some say it’s the secret to the perfect cookie. But, if you prefer a softer, chewy cookie, use Bake mode without convection.
What happens if you bake at a lower temperature?
Baking at a lower temperature slows the spring in the leavening, which prevents a dome from forming on your cake. Most cakes bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Reducing the temperature to 325 degrees is all you need to do to get a flat-topped cake.
We’ve found that the optimal temperature for cookie baking is 350F. It gives the butter in the dough time to melt and lightly spread before the remaining ingredients cook through.
Why is 350 degrees so common?
The Maillard reaction is known to happen at some point between 300° and 350°. Because ovens often fluctuate (or are incorrectly calibrated) a setting of 350° essentially ensures that the browning temperature is reached. Read: It’s a clever way to make sure that all of those glorious flavors are formed.
Q: Why are my cookies so puffy and cakey? Whipping too much air into the dough. That fluffy texture you want in a cake results from beating a lot of air into the room temperature butter and sugar, and it does the same for cookies. So don’t overdo it when you’re creaming together the butter and sugar.
Acidic brown sugar, on the other hand, speeds gluten formation and egg protein coagulation, so the dough sets quickly, making cookies thick and tender/chewy.
Keep in mind that if you adjust the size of the cookie from the original recipe, you will need to adjust the baking time, so watch them carefully. The smaller the cookie, the shorter time in the oven.
Eggs are responsible for giving baked goods structure, which means the amount you use directly affects the resulting texture. Using too few eggs will make your desserts dense, but using too many will make them rubbery. The explanation for this lies in the fact that eggs are made up of protein.
The less friction there is on the pan, the more cookies will spread. So an ungreased pan is best. If you can find untreated parchment paper, that will also help reduce spread—but recent experience suggests that most parchment paper these days has some sort of nonstick coating on it.
How to make cookies spread
- Do not refrigerate your cookie dough before shaping the cookies.
- Use melted butter rather than softened room temperature butter.
- Increase the fat content in the cookies.
- Use more white sugar and less brown sugar.
- Make sure your baking powder is not old.
- Add more liquid to your batter.
Vinegar is a surprisingly common ingredient in baked goods, considering that it has such a sharp flavor. But as an acid, vinegar is often included in cake and cookie batters to react with baking soda and start the chemical reaction needed to produce carbon dioxide and give those batters a lift as they bake.
Adding melted butter to your recipe will change your cookies’ and cakes’ structure, density, and texture: Adding melted butter instead of the traditional softened butter will result in a chewier cookie. Softened butter in cookie dough will give you a more cake-like cookie.
Sugars, like fats liquefy in the oven. White sugar will make your cookies crispier while brown sugar contains more moisture and will result in a softer and more chewy cookie. Most chocolate chip cookie recipes call for both sugars.
Anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. The longer you chill the dough, the more flavor will develop. The flour will also absorb more of the moisture so the thicker and chewier the final texture will be.
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.
Refrigerating the dough allows the flour to fully hydrate, which (in addition to chilling the butter) helps to make the cookie dough firmer, says baker and food stylist Jason Schreiber, who recently published Fruit Cake: Recipes for the Curious Baker ($21.85, amazon.com).
The most common cause is using a different flour than usual, such as cake flour, and measuring flour with too heavy a hand. Using larger eggs than called for can make cookies cakey, as will the addition of milk or more milk or other liquids than specified.
For desserts that are chewy or crisp like cookies, sifting flour isn’t a must. The purpose of sifting flour through a sieve or sifter helps break up clumps and aerates the ingredients. In the past, sifted flour also allowed for more accurate measuring results.
If your cookies are rock hard, the site explains that it’s likely due to an over-abundance of sugar, which hardens, darkens, and flattens the cookies as they bake. Bake or Break adds that over-mixing your dough can be the culprit, too. When flour is blended with other ingredients, gluten starts to form.
If you prefer to bake two sheets, space racks so oven is divided into thirds and switch cookie sheets top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking. Preheat oven 10 to 15 minutes before baking the first sheet or pan of cookies. Check oven temperature with an oven thermometer.
Normally the cookie should not be too flat – should be rounded in the middle, should snap if it’s crispy or bend and break if it’s chewy. If it has nuts, there should be enough of them to have a piece in every bite. The cookies should be big enough to get a good taste of the cookie but not so big that it’s a full meal.
What rack is best for baking?
For most baking and cooking situations, the middle rack will cook and bake food more evenly. But keep in mind, this rule applies only when you’re baking on one rack at a time. For baking on multiple racks, consider… When baking two baking sheets at once, arrange the racks on the top and bottom thirds of the oven.
Egg yolks are high in fat in relation to the egg white which is high in protein so often acts as a binder. Adding egg yolks to the cookies yields a super tender, chewy cookie.
Pastry Flour: An unbleached flour made from soft wheat, with protein levels somewhere between cake flour and all-purpose flour (8 to 9 percent). Pastry flour strikes the ideal balance between flakiness and tenderness, making it perfect for pies, tarts and many cookies.
Yes, you can use cake flour in cookies! It will change the texture, but will still be delicious! What is this? It will change the texture, if the recipe calls for plain or all-purpose flour, but this might be preferable if you want a lighter texture.
Keeping them on the sheet too long after baking can cause them to get hard or stick to the sheet. Cookies are done when they are firmly set and lightly browned. When you touch them lightly with your finger, almost no imprint will remain.
Chocolate chip cookies are done when they have a firm golden edge or bottom and appear slightly set on top. If the edges become dark brown, they are overbaked. If edges aren’t golden and tops are soft and shiny, bake a little longer.
Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar for your cookie dough until they are light and fluffy. This should take about 5 minutes on a medium/high speed. Scrape down the bowl at least once about half way through the mixture.
LOWER THE TEMPERATURE
“Bake low and slow,” says Matheus. Turn your oven down 50 degrees from what your recipe recommends. “When you bake at a lower temperature, you will get that perfect cookie with a soft center and crisp exterior,” she adds.
350° is the standard temp for a cookie, and it’s a great one. Your cookies will bake evenly and the outside will be done at the same time as the inside. Baking at 325° also results in an evenly baked cookie, but the slower cooking will help yield a chewier cookie.
Cookie chemistry: We’re taking a 180° turn from our crunchy cookies, substituting higher-moisture brown sugar and butter for their lower-moisture counterparts: granulated sugar and vegetable shortening. That, plus a shortened baking time, yields a cookie that’s soft and chewy all the way through.
For those ooey, gooey chocolate chip cookies, 375 degrees Fahrenheit is your sweet spot. It’s the perfect temperature to ensure super crispy exterior edges, while leaving the center slightly underdone and, thus, doughy and fudgey.
The short answer is, you can expect to bake cookies at 350 degrees F for between 8 to 12 minutes. That said, a lot needs to be put into consideration when determining how long to bake your cookies – the type of cookies, the size of the cookies, and the content in the dough.
One reason cookies spread: oven temperature
“For this practically perfect tray, we dropped the temperature to 300°F, and extended the baking time: 22 minutes for chewy, 30 minutes for crisp.
They go from soft to hard because they start to dry out, and it begins as soon as you pull them from the oven. (Yikes.) Whatever moisture is left in the cookies is always in a state of evaporation. At the same time, the sugars and starches are solidifying.
However, it may look a bit puffy or soft in the center, too. This is normal and simply means that the cookie may continue baking on the sheet and rack once removed from the oven. Taking cookies out of the oven at this stage will make them softer and chewier. Whereas, overcooking can create brittleness.
Answer: If your baking times are significantly shorter or longer than those called for in a recipe, there may be a calibration issue with your oven’s thermostat. This is a very common problem, and almost all ovens – even those that give the impression of precision through digital temperature displays, etc.
In most cookie recipes, you are instructed to cream room-temperature butter and sugar together. This is because mixing the butter and sugar granules creates air pockets in the dough, which results in puffier cookies.
For softer, chewier cookies, you will want to add much less granulated sugar, slightly more brown sugar, and a fair bit less butter. For cakey cookies, you will often be including even less butter and sugar.
How To Make Thicker Cookies (Using 10 Simple Tips)
- 1 – Refrigerate Your Cookie Dough.
- 2 – Use Room-Temperature Butter.
- 3 – Use the Correct Fat.
- 4 – Focus on Your Mixing Technique.
- 5 – Add Less Granulated Sugar.
- 6 – Add More Flour.
- 7 – Use Bleached Flour.
- 8 – Check Your Rising Agent.