Core Cookie-Baking Techniques

It might sound obvious, but measuring—the first step to creating perfect cookies—takes care: Baking is a science, and inexact measurements will yield inferior results. We provide weights for dry ingredients in our recipes and use a kitchen scale to weigh them; we strongly recommend you do, too.

Once your ingredients are measured, mixing can begin. Depending on the recipe and the desired outcome, doughs can be mixed by hand, by using a mixer, or in a food processor. Cookies that require the butter and sugar to be mixed together until light and fluffy are best suited to a mixer. Creaming butter and sugar in a mixer makes the butter malleable, which allows other ingredients to blend in easily. The tiny sugar crystals act like extra beaters, helping to incorporate air into the butter as it's creamed. These tiny air pockets expand during baking, giving the cookie lift and forming its crumb. Occasionally scraping down the bowl with a spatula guarantees that everything is incorporated.

Once you've created a cohesive dough, the next step is shaping the cookies. For drop cookies like these chocolate chip cookies, you'll portion off a measurement of dough according to the recipe (portion scoops are helpful here) and roll it between your hands to form a ball. Doing this, rather than just dropping mounds of dough on the baking sheet, ensures cookies of equal size that bake evenly. As you form the dough balls, space them evenly on parchment paper–lined baking sheets; even spacing is particularly important for even baking and so the cookies don't spread into one another in the oven.

Once shaped, the cookies are ready for baking, during which starches gelatinize to set the cookie's crumb and sugars caramelize to brown the cookie. But you can't just set them and forget them: Make sure your oven is at the proper temperature by using an oven thermometer. For these cookies, we cook one sheet pan at a time for best texture, so be sure your oven rack is set to the center rack. If you're baking in batches, allow the baking sheet to cool before reusing.

Different cookies require different cooling methods to ensure they set up properly. Some chocolate chip cookies, such as our Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, require a short rest on the baking sheet so they are firm enough to move; after that, they are transferred to a wire rack, where air can circulate around them, to finish cooling. Others, such as our Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies, need to cool completely on the baking sheet in order to achieve the proper consistency.