Cookie Recipes

When cookies turn into sad, flat puddles, the culprit is usually butter that was too warm.
Generally speaking, the warmer the dough is when it enters the oven, the flatter the cookies will bake. So for thick cookies, use butter at a COOL room temperature. Perfect room-temperature butter for cookie baking should give slightly when pressed with your finger but still hold its shape and be at a cool room temperature of about 67°F.
Check out my article for how to bake THICK cookies here.

Because flour compacts easily, you can wind up accidentally adding 20% more flour to your dough if you don’t measure it the professional way.
Make sure to measure your flour accurately by using a digital scale to weigh your ingredients! Too much flour will result in puffy cookies. Check out my article for how to measure flour here.

Make the cookie dough as the recipe instructs. Freezing works best with drop cookies (i.e. chocolate chip, peanut butter, etc.). Cut-out cookies actually freeze well after they’re baked!
Roll the cookie dough into even balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet that fits in your freezer.
Freeze the balls for 1 hour, or until solid. This prevents the balls from sticking to each other.
Remove the balls to a ziptop bag.

I recommend baking with pure vanilla extract. Avoid imitation vanilla flavor.

Yes! Check out my Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Bars or these Loaded Cookie Bars.

The type of baking pan used is SO important.
Nonstick pans or dark colored pans brown way more quickly and aggressively. These Nordic Ware unlined aluminum baking sheets are my go-to for perfectly golden brown cookies.
Check out my Best (and WORST) Baking Pans article here for more details on the science of baking pans.

You can store cookie dough in the freezer for up to 6 weeks so you always have a treat just a few minutes away.

One of the keys to CHEWY cookies is to use more brown sugar than granulated sugar. The molasses in the brown sugar draws in more moisture, making the cookies thicker, softer, and chewier.
For extra chewy cookies, try adding an extra egg yolk. You can also replace half or all of the all-purpose flour with bread flour for an ultra chewy bite.

To keep your baked cookies soft, you can add a piece of bread or tortilla on the top and bottom of the container (not touching the cookies) a day or two after baking them, or whenever you find the texture starting to harden. The moisture from the bread will migrate to your cookies, making them soft and chewy again.
A tortilla is a new favorite of mine because it takes up much less room than a slice of bread and still offers the same results. Not to mention it fits into a round cookie tin pretty perfectly.

This really depends on the specific cookie recipe, though my Soft Batch Double Chocolate Cookies call for natural unsweetened cocoa powder.
To learn more about the differences between Dutch process vs. natural cocoa powder, check out this article.