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Cookies Drop Rolled Cut-Out Icebox Sandwich and Shortbread

Cookies: Drop, Rolled, Cut-Out, Icebox, Sandwich and Shortbread is the Baking hub's page on cookies: the families classified by how the dough is shaped, and the science that decides whether a cookie spreads or stays tall, and whether it comes out chewy, crisp or cakey. Macarons, meringues and biscotti, which follow different rules, have their own page: Macarons Meringues and Biscotti. Pan-pressed cookies are covered under Brownies Blondies and Bars.

Cookies are a low-moisture, high-sugar, high-fat dough. Compared with cake, there is much less water and much more sugar, so gluten barely develops and sugar does most of the structural work. This is why small changes in sugar, fat temperature and flour weight change cookies so much.

Spread, chew and crisp: the science

What makes cookies spread

• A cookie spreads while the dough is fluid and stops when it sets. Anything that makes the dough fluid for longer, or delays setting, increases spread.
• Fat that melts early: butter melts at about 32–35 °C, shortening at about 47 °C. All-butter cookies spread more than shortening cookies. Melted butter spreads more than creamed butter. Warm dough spreads more than chilled dough.
• Sugar: granulated sugar dissolves as the dough heats and turns into syrup, which makes the dough flow. More sugar means more spread. Coarser sugar spreads less than superfine.
• Less flour or lower-protein flour gives more spread. A heavily scooped cup of flour (150 g instead of about 125–130 g) is the most common reason cookies come out puffy.
• Baking soda raises pH and weakens structure, so it increases spread and browning. Baking powder gives more puff and less spread.
• Greased or warm pans increase spread. Parchment or silicone gives grip, and cold pans give less spread. Never put dough on a hot sheet straight from the oven.
• Lower oven temperature gives more spread (more time before setting). A hotter oven sets edges sooner.

Chewy versus crisp versus cakey

• Chewy: more moisture is retained. Use more brown sugar (it holds water), melted butter, an extra egg yolk, bread flour or higher-protein flour (more gluten, more chew), a slightly underbaked centre, and larger cookies. Resting the dough lets the flour hydrate.
• Crisp: moisture is driven out. Use more white sugar, all butter (spread makes cookies thin), more baking soda, fewer or no eggs, a lower temperature with a longer bake, and smaller, thinner cookies. Crisp cookies are a sugar-glass structure, like a thin candy: they turn soft in humid air, and are kept crisp by storing them airtight away from soft cookies.
• Cakey or puffy: more flour, more egg (especially whites), baking powder, shortening or creamed butter, and chilled dough.
• Thickness: cookies about 1.5–2.5 cm (3/4–1 in) tall stay soft in the centre. Very thin cookies crisp right through.

Resting the dough

• Refrigerating cookie dough for 24–72 hours (well wrapped) lets flour absorb liquid and enzymes break down some starch and protein. Rested dough spreads less, browns more deeply and tastes more of toffee. Many bakers, following the New York Times (2008) Jacques Torres recipe, rest chocolate-chip dough for 36 hours.
• Even 30 minutes of chilling reduces spread by firming the butter.

Drop cookies

• Drop cookies are scooped or spooned onto the sheet: chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, snickerdoodles, molasses, ginger, white chocolate macadamia.
• Chocolate chip (invented by Ruth Wakefield at the Toll House Inn, Massachusetts, in the late 1930s) is the reference cookie. The Nestlé Toll House package recipe uses 2¼ cups flour (about 280 g), 1 cup butter (227 g), ¾ cup granulated sugar (about 150 g), ¾ cup packed brown sugar (about 165 g), 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking soda and a 12 oz (340 g) bag of chips; Wakefield's 1938 original used chopped semi-sweet bar chocolate and nuts. Common improvements: brown the butter, use more brown sugar than white, rest the dough, and add flaky salt on top.
• Snickerdoodles use cream of tartar plus baking soda for tang and a soft, cracked top, rolled in cinnamon sugar before baking.
• Oatmeal cookies: rolled oats absorb liquid and give chew. Quick oats give a softer, more uniform cookie; old-fashioned oats give more texture.
• Peanut butter cookies are pressed with a fork crosshatch because the dense dough doesn't spread on its own. Natural peanut butter (which separates) gives crumbly, oily cookies; standard emulsified peanut butter gives the classic texture.
• Portioning: use a spring-loaded scoop (a #40 scoop is about 1 1/2 tablespoons, roughly 25–30 g of dough) or weigh each ball. Equal balls bake evenly and come out equal size. Space them 5–8 cm apart.
• Doneness: edges golden, centres still slightly soft and puffy. They finish setting on the sheet for 3–5 minutes.

Rolled and cut-out cookies

• Rolled cookies (sugar cookies, gingerbread, shortbread cut-outs, linzer) use a firm, low-spread dough so shapes hold: usually creamed butter, sugar, egg and more flour, little or no leavener.
• Chill the dough (at least 1 hour), roll between sheets of parchment to avoid working in extra flour, and chill again after cutting. Cold shapes keep sharp edges.
• Even thickness is everything: use rolling guides or spacers (commonly 6 mm, 1/4 in, for sugar cookies and gingerbread). Uneven dough gives cookies that brown at the thin edges and stay raw at the thick ones. Equal thickness plus the same cutter gives equal-weight cookies.
• Re-rolling scraps adds flour and works the gluten, giving tougher cookies. Gather scraps gently and re-roll only once or twice.
• Gingerbread (molasses, ginger, cinnamon, cloves) for houses is formulated even firmer, with little fat and no leavener, and baked dry. Decorating icings are covered in Frosting Icing and Glazes.

Icebox (slice-and-bake) cookies

• The dough is shaped into a log (often about 5 cm across), wrapped and chilled or frozen until firm, then sliced and baked. Examples: pinwheels, checkerboards, sablés, refrigerator butter cookies, Danish butter cookies.
• Roll the log in sugar, nuts or sprinkles before chilling for a crisp rim. Rotate the log a quarter turn between slices so it stays round. Slice with a thin sharp knife to an even thickness (6–8 mm is typical).
• Logs keep about 3 days in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer. Slice from frozen and add a minute or two to the bake.

Sandwich cookies

• Two thin, crisp, flat cookies with a filling: cream-filled chocolate wafers (Oreo style), linzer cookies (jam showing through a cut-out window), whoopie pies (soft, cake-like), alfajores (shortbread with dulce de leche), macarons (see Macarons Meringues and Biscotti).
• The cookies should be low-spread and uniform. Pipe or scoop by weight, or cut with the same cutter.
• Filling ratios: a simple cream filling is about 2 parts icing sugar to 1 part fat (butter or shortening) by weight, plus vanilla. Shortening-based fillings stay firm at room temperature.
• Assembled sandwich cookies soften as the filling's moisture moves into the cookie. Crisp-cookie sandwiches are best assembled within a day of eating, unless the filling is fat-based.

Shortbread

• Shortbread is the simplest cookie: 1 part sugar, 2 parts butter, 3 parts flour by weight, the classic Scottish ratio. No eggs and no leavener. The high fat ratio gives a tender, sandy, short texture.
• Rice flour or cornstarch replacing 10–25% of the flour makes it more crumbly and melt-in-the-mouth. Icing sugar gives a finer texture than granulated.
• Use good butter at cool room temperature and mix as little as possible. Press into a pan (petticoat tails) or roll and cut, dock with a fork to let steam escape, and bake low and slow, at about 150–165 °C (300–325 °F), until pale golden (20–35 minutes depending on thickness). Score while warm and cut once cool.
• Variations: brown-butter shortbread, millionaire's shortbread (with caramel and chocolate layers), French sablés (with egg yolk), Mexican wedding cookies or Russian tea cakes (with ground nuts, rolled in icing sugar), Greek kourabiedes, Indian nankhatai.

Pressed, piped and other cookies

• Spritz cookies use a soft butter dough pressed through a cookie press. The dough must be soft enough to extrude but firm enough to hold its pattern.
• Tuiles and lace cookies (florentines) are very thin, high-sugar batters that spread into lacy wafers and can be shaped while hot.
• Thumbprints are shortbread-like balls with a jam or caramel centre.
• Pizzelle, stroopwafels and krumkake are baked in patterned irons.

Storage

• Store crisp and soft cookies separately. Soft cookies lose moisture to crisp ones, which then go soft.
• Most cookies keep 3–5 days airtight at room temperature. Baked cookies and portioned dough balls freeze well for about 3 months. Bake frozen dough balls straight from the freezer, adding 1–3 minutes.
• A slice of bread in the container keeps soft cookies soft (the cookies absorb its moisture).

See also

• Baking
• Baking Science Flour Gluten Fats Sugars Eggs and Leaveners
• Oven Temperature Heat Transfer and High-Altitude Baking
• Macarons Meringues and Biscotti
• Brownies Blondies and Bars
• Frosting Icing and Glazes
• Regional Baked Goods of the World
• Infused Baked Goods Even Dosing in Brownies Cookies and Bars
• Scratch Cooking and Culinary Ratios
• Measuring Tools Scales Syringes and Volumetric Dosing
• Food Safety

Sources

• Corriher, S. O. BakeWise. Scribner, 2008. "Crisp, chewy, puffy" cookie chapter: fat type, sugar and spread.
• Figoni, P. How Baking Works, 3rd ed. Wiley, 2011. Cookie spread, sugar dissolution and fat function.
• Pareyt, B. and Delcour, J. A. "The role of wheat flour constituents, sugar, and fat in low moisture cereal based products: a review on sugar-snap cookies." Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 48(9):824–839, 2008.
• McGee, H. On Food and Cooking, rev. ed. Scribner, 2004. Chapter 10, cookies.
• Montagne, D. "Perfection? Hint: it's warm and has a secret." The New York Times, 9 July 2008. Resting chocolate-chip cookie dough for 36 hours.
• López-Alt, J. K. The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science. W. W. Norton, 2015; and "The Food Lab: the best chocolate chip cookies" (Serious Eats, 2013). Brown butter, sugar ratios and resting.
• Wakefield, R. G. Toll House Tried and True Recipes. M. Barrows, 1938 onwards. The original chocolate-chip ("Toll House chocolate crunch") cookie.

Coverage

Cookies by family: the science of spread (fat melting point and temperature, sugar dissolution, flour amount, soda versus powder, pan and oven) and of chewy, crisp and cakey textures, with dough resting; drop cookies (chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, oatmeal, peanut butter) with portioning by scoop or weight; rolled and cut-out cookies with chilling, rolling guides and scraps; icebox and slice-and-bake logs; sandwich cookies and filling ratios; shortbread (the 1:2:3 ratio, rice flour, docking, low baking) and its world variants; spritz, tuiles, thumbprints and iron-baked cookies; storage.

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