Crafting the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Yes! You can recrisp them in a 425-degree oven for 4 to 5 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes before removing them and serve them while they’re warm.

To keep chewy cookies from turning dry and brittle, store them in a zipper-lock bag at room temperature with a small piece of bread (no more than half of a slice) placed inside.

While countertop cookie jars are convenient, attractive, and often have sentimental value, they’re not always airtight. But worry not: simply line the inside of the jar with a zipper-lock bag for airtight storage.

It may sound a bit unorthodox, but the best way to keep gift-wrapped cookies moist is to layer a flour tortilla sandwiched between two rounds of parchment paper between each layer of cookies in your tin.

We develop cookie recipes with the oven racks set to specific positions, so when you use our recipes, you want to make sure to adjust the racks as directed. When we're baking just one sheet of cookies at a time, we nearly always bake them on the middle rack. When we're baking two sheets at a time, we use the upper-middle and lower-middle positions. The middle of the oven is always a safe bet; the closer to the bottom of the oven, the browner the bottoms of your cookies will be relative to the tops.

Baking two trays of cookies at a time may be convenient, but the cookies on the top tray are often browner around the edges than the ones on the bottom tray. If you have two sheets in the oven, you should switch their positions halfway through baking. For cookies with an especially finicky texture, we call for baking the cookies one sheet at a time so heat circulates around the baking sheet evenly for the entire baking time. Even the best ovens have hot and cold spots, so rotating the baking sheet (the cookies that were in the front will now be in the back of the oven) is essential.

We bake all cookies on a sturdy rimmed baking sheet. Rimless “cookie sheets” will work; however, cookies baked on a rimless pan brown more quickly and can finish baking several minutes before those on a rimmed pan. Why? Heat rises from the element at the bottom of the oven and circulates in currents to warm the entire chamber. A rimmed baking sheet's raised edges divert hot-air currents from the cookies to the top of the oven. A rimless sheet allows hot air to immediately sweep over the cookies. Flimsy sheets of either type will result in overbaked cookies.

We use a stand mixer in many of our cookie recipes. To see if an electric handheld mixer was up to the task and could produce the same results, we conducted side-by-side tests by making oatmeal cookies with the two. Although the stand mixer produced a dough with more volume, the baked cookies were identical in number, texture, and flavor. Neither mixer had trouble mixing oatmeal and nuts into the stiff dough on low speed. That being said, the stand mixer offers greater flexibility and versatility, so we call for it in our recipes; in addition, its freestanding base leaves the cook free to accomplish other tasks. However, with some adjustments for time and technique, a handheld mixer generally yields comparable cookies.