Brown Sugar Cookies Recipe | Gimme Some Oven (2024)

FAQs

What is the best brown sugar for cookies? ›

Using all light brown sugar will yield cookies with a lighter flavor (that's not a bad thing!). They'll be buttery with accents of vanilla and a soft interior, but a lighter molasses flavor. Opting for all dark brown sugar will give you a richer flavor and ever-so-slightly softer centers.

Baking soda is typically used for chewy cookies, while baking powder is generally used for light and airy cookies. Since baking powder is comprised of a number of ingredients (baking soda, cream of tartar, cornstarch, etc.), using it instead of pure baking soda will affect the taste of your cookies.

Brown sugar adds a beautiful color as well as a more complex flavor. They'll also make cookies chewier, softer, and thicker than white sugar. Adding too much can result in dark brown cookies. Adding too little results in paler cookies.

Room temperature butter is just the right consistency to incorporate air when it's creamed with sugar. These trapped air pockets result in risen, fluffy cookies. If the butter is any warmer, it won't incorporate enough air and your cookies will have less rise.

For chewier and more flavorful cookies, use more brown sugar than white sugar. Dark Brown Sugar: Light brown sugar and dark brown sugar are interchangeable in most recipes. Though either works in this chocolate chip cookie recipe, I love using dark brown sugar for extra flavor because it contains more molasses.

All-purpose flour is the most commonly used flour in cookie recipes due to its moderate protein content (usually around 10-12%). This balanced protein level makes it versatile enough to produce both soft and chewy cookies as well as slightly crisp ones.

If you don't put baking soda in cookies the cookies don't rise the small amount they need to and they turn out flat.

Without baking soda or baking powder, these cookies will remain a little flatter then other recipes but because of the eggs and creaming of the butter and sugars in this recipe they will still puff up a little in the oven. They will have crispy edges and a soft, chewy center.

Vanilla does offer more than just a bit of floral flavor. Sometimes it's a flavor enhancer and sometimes it's a flavor balancer. But to be honest, unless it's a vanilla cookie, it's not a true dealbreaker. Especially if you're making cookies that have lots of other flavors going on, like coconut or dark chocolate.

Cookies become hard when the moisture in them evaporates. This can be caused by leaving them out in the air for too long, baking them for too long, or storing them improperly. The lack of moisture makes the cookies hard and dry, which makes them difficult to enjoy.

What happens if you don't put enough butter in cookies? ›

Dry Texture: Butter is a source of moisture in cookie dough. Without enough butter, the dough can become dry and crumbly. This can make it difficult to form the dough into cohesive balls or drop it onto baking sheets, and it can result in cookies that are overly dry and lacking in tenderness.

Baking powder: Baking powder can be used to replace baking soda, though not at a 1-to-1 ratio. Because the former is not as strong as the latter, it's important to use three times the amount of baking powder as baking soda. Be aware, a slightly bitter, off-putting taste might result from using that much baking powder.

“The result is added tenderness with more structure.” You don't need much of the ingredient to notice significant changes in your favorite recipe. Add a teaspoon or two to your dry ingredient mix and it will drastically change the texture. It's also fun to experiment until you get the exact finish you desire.

Cream of tartar is the secret ingredient to making whipped cream fluffy and light. It's also used to make meringue more sturdy, and to add a bit of tangy zip to baked goods, such as snickerdoodle cookies.

So in baking they act the same way in the dough, but the taste and colour will be slightly different. You can substitute dark brown sugar for the light brown sugar in the cookie recipe, however the cookies will be slightly darker in colour and will have a slightly more caramelly/toffee taste to them.

The only food where variety more or less matters is cookies: Since dark brown sugar has a higher acidity than light, it can cause the baking soda in your recipe to react, which may force your cookies to rise more during their designated baking time. However, the overall differences are moderate at most.

The difference in flavor between white and brown sugar is entirely from the added molasses. Molasses is thick and wet and sticky, so using darker brown sugar is going to make the cookies a tiny bit more gooey. It reacts with baking soda, so it can help convert it to bubbles and leaven the cookie.

All that being said, if you're only going to keep one kind on hand, let it be light brown sugar. It's more common, a bit more versatile due to the subtler flavor, and many pro bakers (like Dorie Greenspan, Joanne Chang, and Sarah Kieffer) use it to develop their recipes.