World's Best Butter Cookies Recipe - Food.com (2024)

FAQs

Which butter is best for butter cookies? ›

Unsalted butter is better suited to baked goods like cookies that are sensitive to salt content and rely on butter's creamy flavor profile, helping ensure that you don't end up with an overly-salty baked good.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

Adjust baking time to achieve the cookie texture desired. A little less time produces chewier cookies, a little more time makes them crispy. If you prefer softer cookies, remove them from the oven while they are still slightly under baked. Always check for doneness at the minimum baking time.

Want to know what makes chocolate chip cookies even better? More butter, of course! The extra butter in these cookies makes them super tender. Everyone will wonder about your “secret ingredient,” but only you'll know the reason for the popularity of your easy chocolate chip cookies.

All-Purpose Flour: The Versatile Choice

If you're looking for a safe bet or are new to cookie baking, all-purpose flour is your go-to option.

If you know your dairy products, you know the brand: Cabot, a cooperative of dairy farmers based in Vermont. Their Cabot Creamery Cooperative Extra Creamy Sea Salted butter, from one of their partner dairies in Massachusetts, won the award for best salted butter with a sky-high score of 99.65.

If you enjoy your cookies soft and chewy, chances are likely the recipe contains a common ingredient that serves a very specific purpose. No, it's not granulated sugar, nor the butter. It's not the egg, all-purpose flour, or even the vanilla extract. The simple, yet oh-so-necessary component is cornstarch.

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.

Baking powder or flour in excess will cause cookies to rise more, making them more fluffy and cakey. Increased sugar will make them caramelize more and increased fat will make the dough heavier and richer, all increasing retention of water in the dough- these all add up to chewier cookies.

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

Why do my butter cookies taste like flour? ›

Over-measuring flour: If you use too much flour in your cookie dough, it can result in a dry, floury taste. Make sure you measure your flour correctly by using a kitchen scale or by spooning the flour into a measuring cup and leveling it off with a knife.

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.

Our control cookie, as with most cookies, uses softened butter, and this recipe tends to be a bit cakier. A cookie made with the same amount of melted butter will give you a fudgier, chewier cookie. It helps it spread out more and gives you some nice divots to catch more chocolate.

If there isn't enough egg, your batter or dough may not be able to hold its structure or could end up overly dry or dense. On the other hand, if there is too much egg, your baked goods could lose their shape due to excess liquid, or have a rubbery (or even overly cakey) texture depending on the recipe.

Higher butterfat makes better cookies.

An average conventional American butter has an 80% butterfat content. Miller's butter is more of a European-style butter with 82-86% butterfat. 2% may seem small, but it makes a BIG difference in quality, flavor, and texture.

High-quality butter has higher milk fat content, which gives you richer, flakier and more flavourful baked goods that tend to have better shape and structure. A lower-quality butter has more water content, which will produce, for example, a crisper, flatter cookie with more crunch.

The best butter for baking is unsalted butter. Whether that unsalted butter comes in sweet cream, European-style, organic, grass-fed, cultured, plant-based, Amish, or browned butter, any of these options that remain unsalted are great for baking.