60+ Cookie Dough Recipes! (2024)

FAQs

How long should you age cookie dough? ›

How Long Should I Chill Cookie Dough? 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.

Most cookie dough can be refrigerated, well-wrapped, for 3-5 days before baking. If you want to make it farther in advance, freeze the dough. You can either freeze the entire brick of dough or divide it into portions for quick baking.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. 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.

As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product. Once the dough has chilled, let it warm up at room temperature until it's just pliable (about 5 to 10 minutes).

Add brown sugar

Adding it to the pre-made dough will give it more sweetness, a chewier texture, moisture and that homemade flavor you're craving. You can also melt butter with brown sugar and incorporate it into the dough for extra tender, chewier cookies.

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. The outsides will be a little softer, too.

Brown sugar is a common ingredient in homemade cookie recipes, so it makes sense that adding a bit of it to a premade mix will make your dessert taste more authentic. According to Fine Cooking, brown sugar can make cookies chewier and moister, which can help give premade dough a homemade twist.

Putting cookie dough into the freezer before baking can help solidify the fat from the butter in your cookies, which in turn keeps them from spreading too much in the oven. Colder dough will not expand as much as warm dough does. This will produce a higher, thicker cookie.

That's right, you can freeze it for a bit to shave quite a bit of time off the chilling suggestion in the recipe. Here's what our Test Kitchen recommends when quickly chilling cookie dough in the freezer: Place the cookie dough in the freezer for one-quarter of the recommended refrigerator time.

How to Tell if Cookie Dough Is 'Bad' Like many food products, deciphering if your cookie dough has kicked the bucket is a matter of using your senses. If it has any visible mold, smells off (pungent/sour), or has developed hard or discolored edges, you've missed your fresh-baked opportunity.

Does resting cookie dough make it taste better? ›

The short answer is: Yes. Resting your dough in the refrigerator will almost always yield better results. But why? Chilling your cookie dough in the refrigerator after mixing it allows the flour to hydrate and gives the other ingredients time to blend, resulting in a richer, more well-rounded flavor profile.

You can upgrade your cookie dough by adding spices to it, said Tracy Wilk, lead chef at the Institute of Culinary Education. This can lead to a warm, spicy cookie. To do so, combine ground cinnamon, ginger, and sugar, and then roll your balls of cookie dough in the mix before baking.

The fact is, no matter how divine and delicious cookie dough is, it is a raw product that contains eggs and butter. Over time, it'll become rancid, on top of the lurking danger of salmonella and E. coli.

Traditionally, bakers add a piece of old dough to their next batch of dough to add depth of flavor. But you can also use old dough as a substitute for sourdough starter. Feed the old dough with water and flour, just as you would a starter. Then use it in a recipe.