Better Baking: 5 Top Tips for Making Good Cookies

Looking for cookie baking tips to make your next batch the most delicious yet? We’ve got you covered. Discover our top tips for making good cookies right here.

If you’re looking for cookie baking tips to perfect your attempts at these little bites of heaven, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve put together 5 tried and tested tips and tricks to help make your next batch of cookies the most delicious yet! Plus, discover 3 of our most popular cookie recipes and put your newfound knowledge of baking cookies into practice!

Once you’ve made up your cookie dough, it’s a good idea to let it chill in the fridge for about 24 hours before baking your cookies.

When you do this, it firms up the dough and makes it less likely to over-spread when baking. This, in turn, will give you thicker cookies with a more solid structure.

What’s more, chilling your dough also helps to develop the flavours better. Plus, it helps each cookie in your batch bake in exactly the same way for that all-important consistency.

You’ll likely find that your cookie dough is harder to manipulate into the right shapes once it’s been cooling, but let it sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes and then it should be much easier.

For the most part, you’ll likely just use whichever sugar the recipe you’re following calls for.

However, it’s handy to know how different types of sugars can affect the flavour, colour, texture and taste of the cookies you’re baking. That way, you’ll have a better idea of how the cookies you make are likely to turn out.

Golden granulated sugar absorbs the liquid in the dough, resulting in flatter, firmer and crunchier cookies that are crispier and biscuit-like rather than soft and chewy.

White caster sugar is the classic baking sugar we all know and love. The finer granules tend to add sweetness to your baked goods and the sugar beats together well with softened butter to form a delicious cookie dough base.

Golden caster sugar is the less-processed, unrefined version of classic white caster sugar. If you’re baking cookies and want to achieve a nuttier, more caramelised flavour, golden caster is the better choice.

Using light brown soft sugar in your cookie mix tends to help retain more of the nutrients. When mixed with white caster sugar, light brown soft sugar yields a softer, chewier texture with a more caramelised flavour.

Dark brown sugar, on the other hand, yields a deeper, richer flavour and gives your cookie dough a denser complexity – perfect for more exotic flavours.

Fortunately, when it comes to sugars, we’ve got you covered! Use the link below to explore our vast and varied range.

The easiest way to fall short of achieving delicious cookies is by putting your beautifully measured and mixed cookie dough in the oven and then turning it on. This might seem obvious to some, but you’d be surprised by how many bakers overlook this key step.

If you’ve got a high-tech oven that will let you know when it’s up to temperature – great! But otherwise, you’ll need to give your oven 10-15 minutes to get up to temperature before you put your cookies in to bake.

It’s highly advisable to follow your chosen cookie recipe to the letter, particularly when it comes to measurements.

Most cookie recipes will give you some insight as to the outcome of the cookies you’re baking, both in terms of texture and flavour, so be sure to pay attention to how the cookies are described in the recipe’s introduction to make sure they’re the type of cookies you want. Then, follow the flour, sugar, and other measurement instructions precisely.

By the same token, it’s worth reading the entire recipe through once before you attempt any actual baking. This way, you won’t be surprised by any of the steps, and you can take the time to prepare all the necessary ingredients, cookware and utensils before getting started.

That centre rack in your oven is prime real estate when baking cookies.

If you’re baking loads of batches of cookies and you stick them all in the oven at once, you’re just not going to see consistent results. Even if you’re rotating the different batches around the oven, it’s just extra faff you don’t really need.

Instead, when you’re making cookies, bake them one batch at a time so your cookies can benefit from the optimal cooking conditions of that middle, centre shelf.

So, there you have it, 5 top tips for baking chocolate chip cookies.

Now you’ve got these cookie baking tips to hand, why not put them into practice with one of our popular chocolate chip cookies recipes?

With a crispy outside and a soft, chewy centre, these melting chocolate chip bookies strike the perfect textural balance.

For chocolate chip cookies with a delicious peanut butter twist, give these buttery biscuit bites a try.

These irresistibly soft and chewy cookies are generously studded with three types of chocolate (dark, milk, and white) and blanched hazelnuts.