Tips for Better Cookies

Hello Ladies!
Christmas is almost here and with it comes the plates of holiday cookies. But sometimes our cookie recipes don’t turn out quite the way we had hoped. I once received a call from a friend of mine. She was in a panic because her cookies were spreading too thin when baking. The problem was probably too much butter or sugar. The solution was to stick the raw dough in the fridge for a couple of hours. I have also been asked why my cookies taste so good. I tell them I have a secret ingredient. I will share it with you.
I use butter! Not margarine, butter. Real butter. Not Crisco either, even the butter flavored kind. You know what else is flavored like butter? Butter. The best butters to use in cookies are Land o Lakes and Challenge. Land o Lakes is great for freezing because it cuts nice and smooth straight from the freezer, instead of crumbling. I know they are more expensive but wait for them to go on sale and stock up. Use butter, have great cookies.
Here are few other helpful tips for getting your cookies to turn out just right.
-For chewy cookies melt your butter before mixing it in. Butter is 20% water so when it is melted that water can better mix with the flour to form gluten.
-For thin, candy-like cookies, add more sugar. The sugar melts when in the oven and helps the cookies to spread. But add it sparingly, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time until you get the results you want.
-For cakey cookies, add an egg yolk. Yolks make the cookies richer and more cake like.
-For puffy, dryer cookies, use egg white.
-For a coarse crumb with lots of air pockets and craggy top, add baking soda. The baking soda reacts quickly with acidic ingredients to create lots of gas bubbles.
-For a fine, tight crumb (no air pockets) and a smooth top, add baking powder. Baking powder works slowly to create an even rise.
-For a smooth, delicate, melt in your mouth texture, use baker’s sugar. Baker’s sugar or super fine sugar, is fine granule white sugar. It can be found right next to the regular sugar in most supermarkets. Because it is a finer grain it melts more quickly that regular sugar. Baker’s sugar is measured the same as regular sugar so there is no need to adjust your recipe. You can also make your own by measuring out the amount of sugar called for in the recipe and then processing it in a food processor for about 20 seconds. Do not substitute it with powdered sugar, it is not the same thing.
Hopefully this will help you all to have butter, I mean better, cookies this holiday season.
Merry Christmas!
Julia
P.S. BUTTER!