Kitchen

[SharkE]

I use parchment. Recipe, I made only called for bak soda. I'm cutting down on butter next time I see a recipe calling for 2 sticks. Cutting it to stick and a half and uping the flour half cup.

[justathought]

if you cream the butter and sugar to long cookies will be flat-try chilling the dough if this happens.

I just dump everything in the mixer at the same time and just mix till smooth. seems to help also.

[SharkE]

That's true the recipe I used said this ""add the eggs and mix no more then 1 minute""

""turn the speed down and mix dry ingredients just until combined"". I may had mixed to long.

[Dorothy11]

The most important thing in baking is temperature. If the first pan of cookies is spreading more than others, it is probably the oven temperature. Cookie spread is greater at higher temperatures. Try preheating your oven for an extra 15-20 minutes. Ovens tend to preheat above the set temperature at first.

[SuziQ2]

My Dad was a professional baker when I was growing up. He specialized in wedding cakes, ( had his picture in the papers many times with his creations ) and worked at Treasure Island when I was growing up. He also baked bread, pies...hot cross buns, so many different things...and I learned from him, as he examined everything I baked.

He always told me that Butter will make your cookies go flat. If you want thicker/fluffy cookies...use Crisco/shortening. If my recipe calls for 1 cup of Crisco, I do a scant cup. That helps too. I do use margarine & Crisco mixed- half each for Peanut Butter Cookies and everyone who my kids/grown kids/hubbie shares my cookies with ... are surprised they are thicker - but nice and fluffy. That also is attributed to creaming the shortening well. Everyone I have seen that uses just Butter, has flat chocolate chip cookies, and the chips look like bumps on a flat cookies.

Hope this helps. Oh...and if I am baking more than one pan of cookies...I use another pan to alternate with. Don't put cookie dough on warm pans...make sure they cool well before beginning another batch. You will have nicer cookies.

[SharkE]

Interesting. I like oatmeal cookies better made with lard/Crisco. I still say electric ovens aren't as good as gas.

Thanks for taking the time to post this !

[Dorothy11]

On 2/21/2015 SuziQ2 said:

My Dad was a professional baker when I was growing up. He specialized in wedding cakes, ( had his picture in the papers many times with his creations ) and worked at Treasure Island when I was growing up. He also baked bread, pies...hot cross buns, so many different things...and I learned from him, as he examined everything I baked.

He always told me that Butter will make your cookies go flat. If you want thicker/fluffy cookies...use Crisco/shortening. If my recipe calls for 1 cup of Crisco, I do a scant cup. That helps too. I do use margarine & Crisco mixed- half each for Peanut Butter Cookies and everyone who my kids/grown kids/hubbie shares my cookies with ... are surprised they are thicker - but nice and fluffy. That also is attributed to creaming the shortening well. Everyone I have seen that uses just Butter, has flat chocolate chip cookies, and the chips look like bumps on a flat cookies.

Hope this helps. Oh...and if I am baking more than one pan of cookies...I use another pan to alternate with. Don't put cookie dough on warm pans...make sure they cool well before beginning another batch. You will have nicer cookies.

This comes back to temperature. Shortening has a higher melting point than butter. With shortening, the starches in the dough set more before the shortening melts. I still prefer butter for flavor. Baking at a slightly lower temperature will help control the spread.

[Pook]

That's odd because usually it's the other way with dough being warmer and they get flatter after the first few batches.