Tips for Baking the Best Cookies

• Bake on light aluminum sheet pans lined with parchment paper. This is one of my best tips. The difference baking cookies on the correct pan makes is hard to explain until you just try it. Many of my cookie recipes will be pictured on my older pans on this site, but once I switched the these Nordic Ware Naturals Aluminum Sheet Pans, I am never going back to anything else! The cookies bake perfectly on these pans and it made all the difference in ensuring the recipe turns out the best!
• Line the sheet pan with parchment paper. I know I just mentioned this in the first tip above, but it needs to be reiterated! Using parchment paper makes such a big difference when baking cookies. It stops the bottoms from sticking, stops the bottoms from browning too much, and even plays a role in how they bake and spread. I prefer parchment paper over silicone mats as well, but silicone mats are a good alternative.
• Use room temperature ingredients. This is especially true for cold ingredients often used for cookies such as milk, eggs, and/or butter. Butter in cookies can be melted or softened at room temperature depending on the recipe (please follow the recipe as not all cookie recipes are created evenly and if they call for melted butter versus room temperature butter, then the rest of the recipe is specifically formatted to accomodate that. Room temperature butter creamed with sugar is going to result in a softer thicker cookie whereas a cookie recipe with melted butter will result in a crispier cookie. I have cookie recipes that use both methods and it really just depends on the final result you're going for. Bottom line - follow the recipe for butter temperature recommendations.
• Measure the flour properly. Flour is the most commonly incorrectly measured ingredient in baking and using too much or too little can greatly alter the outcome of any recipe. The MOST accurate way to measure flour is to weigh it with a food scale. Most recipes will account for around 120-130 grams per 1 cup of flour. If you do not have a scale or the recipe does not specify metric measurements, use the spoon and level method! At the very least, you should ALWAYS fluff up the flour before measuring it into the measuring cups. Fluff the flour up with a utensil in the container and/or bag, then use a spoon to spoon the flour into the measuring cup until full, then take the straight edge/handle of the spoon or butter knife to level off the flour from the top of the measuring cup.
• Avoid overmixing! Always whisk the dry ingredients in a separate bowl first and then fold the dry ingredients in gently. This helps to avoid overdeveloping the gluten. If you are using a gluten free flour 1:1 blend, then you do not need to worry about this as much.
• Use a cookie scoop to scoop evenly sized cookies. This is an easy tip to scoop the uniformly sized cookies. You could also use a scale to ensure each cookie dough ball weighs the exact same, but a cookie scoop will do the job.
• Let cookies cool on the sheet pan for a couple minutes, but then transfer to a cooling rack. It is important to transfer the baked cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely. Let them sit on the sheet pan for just a couple of minutes to make them easier to transfer. Using a flat/thin spatula slide it carefully under the baked cookies and gently transfer to the rack one by one. Cookies can be very fragile when hot, so transfer with care! This stops the baking and ensures the cookies do not overbake. Remember that the cookies will continue to bake on the hot pan, so you want to account for this in the total bake time of the cookies. This is why you will often see recipes note that cookies will look a bit underdone when they come out of the oven but they will be baked through by the time they're transferred from the pan. I can tell cookies are baked and ready to come out of the oven when the edges are just starting to lightly brown and the centers/top of the cookies no longer look glossy/shiny.