Science: How to Bake Crinkly Cookies (Like Sugar Cookies, Gingersnaps, or Chocolate Crinkle Cookies)
Buy Cook’s Science today:
The Science of Good Cooking:
Dan Souza explains the science behind getting perfectly crinkly, cracked exteriors on cookies.
Recipe for Chocolate Crinkle Cookies:
America’s Test Kitchen is a real 2,500 square foot test kitchen located just outside of Boston that is home to more than three dozen full-time cooks and product testers. Our mission is simple: to develop the absolute best recipes for all of your favorite foods. To do this, we test each recipe 30, 40, sometimes as many as 70 times, until we arrive at the combination of ingredients, technique, temperature, cooking time, and equipment that yields the best, most-foolproof recipe.
Each week, the cast of America’s Test Kitchen brings the recipes, testings, and tastings from Cook’s Illustrated magazine to life on our public television series. With more than 2 million viewers per episode, we are the most-watched cooking show on public television.
More than 1.3 million home cooks rely on Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country magazines to provide trusted recipes that work, honest ratings of equipment and supermarket ingredients, and kitchen tips.
Related posts
17 Comments
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I followed this recipe several times to the letter and they flatten out too much. I tried refrigerating the dough and and adjusting the temperature. Too much spread. What am I doing wrong.
Whats your reference?
Yikes! I definitely could not roll these cookies – way too liquid!! They are in the refrigerator – hoping to save this !!
UPDATE: OK – Thank you Wealllive Together for your comment about tossing batter straight into sugar (from scoop – recipe tells you to roll). This saved me from tossing the batter into the trash! However my cookies spread a lot and did not crack 🙁
First time an ATK recipe did not work for me. Cookie tastes ok. Just not a crinkle cookie as promised.
Cool and good
Thank you for this bang-on video! After making one batch of mediocre chocolate un-crinkled cookies, I followed Dan's instructions (using the CI recipe), and they turned out brilliantly. Many people said they were the best chocolate cookies they'd ever eaten. The process was incredibly messy, as the loose batter had to be tossed into bowls of granulated sugar FIRST, followed by bowls of icing sugar. They spread quite a bit, yet the finished product looked professional. Made them perfectly using this method three times. Highly recommended.
I'm trying to bake cookies that have no gluten, that use almond paste instead. The texture of the dough is much stickier than traditional dough. Will this method still work? The recipe does not call for baking powder or soda.
Thanks for sharing this amazing video. I did also try this out.
https://youtu.be/9Q_vDeU4imw
Please let me know how you find it!!
This was interesting. I learned a lot about cookies, thank you!
does anyone else hate the music?
I have a question. You say to bake the cookies on a higher rack because of heat deflection. Are you assuming that the heating element is on the floor of the oven? My old electric oven's heating element was on the floor of the oven. My new electric oven's heating element is at the top. I am assuming that this makes a big difference and that whether the cookie tray should be on the top rack or the bottom rack would vary on where the heating element actually is. Am I correct? If yes, then how should it be?
I've made your recipe. But the problem is why my cookie batter wasn't thick enough. It was like brownies batter, I did let them sit out for 10 mins, and when I scooped one out, it was very sticky. :/ And also, the cookies looked kinda flat, and the powdered sugar seemed to disappear away – the sugar wasn't really enough?
I love this guy!
That's great info! I'll have to try some new recipes. Thanks!
Looks like they are grooming Dan Souza as a replacement for Bridget or Christopher.
Thank you ATK, these videos always help me understand so much. I'm becoming more confident every time I bake.
I'm constantly experimenting when I'm baking so I'm very excited there's a book on this. I'll be buying that book soon!
Very interesting video, quite nice to understand the chemistry behind the baking. Thumbs up.