The Perfect Cookie
Exploring the Ingredients and Techniques That Shape Your Ideal Cookie
by John Salloum
Making cookies is one of the most popular baking activities. It is simple and so fun! Whether you are with friends, your grandma, or even by yourself, it is perhaps the least daunting baking activity. As with most things in baking, cookies can come down to a science based on the ingredients used and how much you use.
To break it down, we will first go ingredient by ingredient and uncover what they actually do for the cookie. Flour is the backbone of it, it provides structure and cohesion for the other ingredients to bind with. Sugar plays many roles beyond simply sweetening the cookie, influencing aspects such as moisture and crispness. Crispy cookies use granulated sugar whilst soft, Levian-style ones opt for a molasses-rich brown sugar to create that gooey inside. Butter provides the richness as well as the shaping of the cookie itself. Cold butter creates thicker, cakier cookies, whereas melted butter yields chewier, flatter cookies. Baking soda and baking powder also contribute to the rise and fall of the cookie shape, adding too much can leave you with thin discs, and too little leaves you with balls of warm cookie dough.
The ideal cookie is a perfect combination of all the above, adjusting and measuring to your preferred outcome. For example, Levain Bakery was very popular coming off of COVID-19, with their gooey, cookie dough-like cookies making waves on the internet. Priding themselves as New York’s most popular cookie, and arguably Back Bay’s, these cake-like delicacies utilize richer ingredients such as brown sugar and lots and lots of butter. The cookie itself is dense, rich, and perfect for anyone who has a sweet tooth. Crumble cookies follow a similar pattern, selling cookies that could pass as borderline cakes. On the other hand, the store-bought Pillsbury dough cookies always seem to come out flat and crispy in my oven, likely due to their higher usage of white sugar and baking soda.
No matter your preference, it’s always interesting to understand the science happening behind the scenes in baking. It’s a form of creative experimentation, using different ingredients and measurements to craft the perfect cookie tailored to your taste buds.
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