How to Thicken Cookie Dough - Ultimate Guide - (2024)

FAQs

How do you thicken cookie dough? ›

Soft – Dough that's “soft” or “runny” can be thickened by adding one or two tablespoons of flour to your mix. This will help keep your batch from “Spreading” and coming out of the oven looking like flat, not-so-cookie-like puddles.

Even if you didn't add double the amount of milk to the dough, runny dough is often caused by too much liquid. This means that using an ingredient that counteracts that liquid should make your cookie dough thicker than it currently is. The best ingredient to use in this situation is going to be flour.

Thankfully if your cookie dough turns out too runny, there are a variety of methods you can use to fix it! The best and most common method is adding flour, but you can also try cornstarch, chilling the dough, or adding heat. Hopefully these 6 tips for thickening cookie dough were helpful to you.

If your cookie dough is indeed too runny, try adding a tablespoon of flour at a time and mixing until fully incorporated after each addition. Give the flour some time to soak up the moisture, do not rush. Stop adding as soon as the dough reaches your desired consistency.

Add More Flour

Adding more flour is a no-fail way to make your cookie dough less sticky, and the first port of call we'd recommend. However, there is one caveat: you do not want to add too much, as you'll end up with tasteless, dry cookies. What is this? Try adding one tablespoon at a time, and mixing to combine.

Potato starch is a staple in many baking households and has been used as a thickening agent in recipes for years.

The longer you chill the dough, the more flavor will develop. The flour will also absorb more of the moisture so the thicker and chewier the final texture will be.

Cornstarch not only acts as a thickening agent, but it can also be used in baked goods like cookies, brownies and cakes. If you're searching for more structure in your favorite dessert recipe, then cornstarch might be just the ingredient you need!

You're not using enough flour

Without sufficient flour, there is nothing to absorb or hold onto all the fat and liquid from your eggs and butter, causing the dough to spread as soon as it hits the oven.

The ideal thickness to roll out your sugar cookie dough is about 1/4"--that way, they'll be tough enough to be handled and decorated, but thin enough to stay a little crunchy.

Why do you add milk to cookie dough? ›

Liquid milk, she says, “allows leavened dough to retain more gas,” therefore making it lighter. But liquid milk also adds water to batters and doughs, too much of which can ruin the texture of the finished baked good.

If your dough mixture has too much water in it, simply add extra flour to the dough, spoon by spoon to prevent a dry dough. Separating the dough into two more manageable portions could help when adding the correct amount of flour to reduce the moisture.

So the less you work the dough, the softer the cookie. How: Add a teaspoon or two of cornstarch (up to a tablespoon if you want!) into your dry ingredients. Why This Works: Cornstarch binds with the liquids in your dough, so this makes your cookies spread less.

By increasing the amount of flour, you're going to make sure that your cookies don't spread as much, which keeps them puffy. You could also substitute cake flour for all-purpose flour, which is going to create a cake-like texture that is tender and moist and puffier than a dense, chewy, cookie.

The perfect cookie dough consistency should be soft and pliable, but sometimes the texture of our cookie dough comes out dry and crumbly, which may lead to some dry cookies. Some of the common reasons you may have dry, crumbly dough include: Not Enough Fat. Not Enough Liquid.

If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure. Therefore, as the butter spreads so does the whole liquidy cookie.

Easy-to-access alternatives are wheat flour, arrowroot flour, and rice flour. These are good alternatives to cornstarch because they are more nutritious and contain fewer carbohydrates and calories. Xanthan and guar gum are much stronger thickeners than cornstarch, but they can be harder to obtain and use.

It's important to note that cornstarch has twice the thickening power of flour. If you need to substitute cornstarch in a gravy recipe that calls for ¼ cup (four tablespoons) flour, you would only need to use two tablespoons cornstarch.

Cornstarch or arrowroot

Cornstarch and arrowroot are gluten-free alternatives to thickening with flour. They'll also keep your sauce clear and cloud-free. You'll need about 1 tablespoon for every cup of liquid in the recipe. Mix the cornstarch with equal parts water to create a slurry and pour it into the pot.

Chilling the dough creates fluffier cookies with better consistency. Plus, if a bowl of dough is ready in the refrigerator, it's much easier to scoop while chilled than at room temperature.

What does putting cookie dough in the fridge before baking do? ›

Chilling cookie dough before baking solidifies the fat in the cookies. As the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt than room-temperature fat. And the longer the fat remains solid, the less cookies spread.

How Long to Refrigerate Cookie Dough. As a general rule of thumb, you should refrigerate cookie dough for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. More than that, and you won't see a noticeable difference in the final product.

A 50-50 split of all-purpose flour and cornstarch in your batter will leave you with an audibly crunchy, beautiful browned exterior. The corn adds a bit of golden color that all-purpose flour can't quite get to.

Double Your Yolks Most cookie recipes call for at least one egg. You can try omitting the white of each egg, which tends to dry out when baked, and replacing it with an additional yolk. Plus, egg yolks have more fat than egg whites, which helps to keep your cookies moist and chewy.

In powdered sugar, corn starch serves as an anti-caking agent while in puddings. It serves as a thickening agent. Corn starch is also paired with flour in baking formulas to give the baked item greater crumb strength, while at the same time increasing the tenderness of the grain.

Incorporate more flour.

The simplest and most advisable way to thicken cookie dough is to add a couple tablespoons of cake flour to a runny cookie dough. Mix it gently to prevent overmixing, which will result in a tough cookie dough. For roll-out cookie dough, knead the extra flour in by hand.

Mistake: When cookies turn out flat, the bad guy is often butter that is too soft or even melted. This makes cookies spread. The other culprit is too little flour—don't hold back and make sure you master measuring. Finally, cookies will also flatten if placed and baked on hot cookie sheets.

Baking soda is most commonly used in cookie and muffin recipes. Baking powder, however, already contains an acid and a base and has a more neutral taste, which works great when baking cakes and bread.

If your goal is to significantly change the texture of your cookies and achieve a deep, golden-brown color and better flavor, 24 hours is a solid benchmark. This gives your dough enough time to fully hydrate and will result in noticeable changes.

"Overmixing your dough will result in flatter, crispier cookies," Cowan said. If you overmix, you will end up aerating the dough (adding air) which causes the cookies to rise and then fall, leaving you with flat cookies.

How can you make sure dough is the same thickness? ›

Keeping your dough squared off on all sides means when you roll it up into a log, you won't have smaller/thinner pieces at the end - the whole log will be one thickness, meaning every cinnamon roll will be the same when you slice them!

Eggs add structure, leavening, color, and flavor to our cakes and cookies. It's the balance between eggs and flour that help provide the height and texture of many of the baked goods here on Joy the Baker. It's a balancing act. Different parts of the egg pull the weight in different ways.

If you mix (or roll out) cookie dough too much, you'll add excess air to the dough, causing it to rise and then fall flat in the oven. Overmixing the dough can also lead to excess gluten development, resulting in dense cookies.

Popping your dough in the fridge allows the fats to cool. As a result, the cookies will expand more slowly, holding onto their texture. If you skip the chilling step, you're more likely to wind up with flat, sad disks instead of lovely, chewy cookies. Cookies made from chilled dough are also much more flavorful.

There is always some point at which you can put in too much water where no matter how strong you make the dough the loaf will not hold its shape and will flatten out during baking.

Folding helps add strength to bread dough through a very simple series of actions: stretch the dough out and over itself. This act of stretching and folding, which takes just a few moments, helps develop the gluten network in the dough. Each fold has a significant impact on dough strength.

Why is my dough so sticky? Your dough can become sticky when you add too much water or the flour isn't suitable for the type of dough you are making. Over proofing or fermenting the dough can also result in the gluten structure weakening causing sticky dough.

How much cornstarch is needed to thicken gravy? The ratio is an easy one to remember: Use 1 tablespoon of cornstarch per 1 cup of liquid for a perfect gluten-free gravy thickener every time.

Cornstarch needs heat (in the ballpark of 203°F) in order for “starch gelatinization”—that is, the scientific process in which starch granules swell and absorb water—to occur. In other words, if you don't heat your cornstarch to a high enough temperature, your mixture will never thicken.

If you're cooking hot liquids like sauces, stock or broth, 1 tablespoon of corn starch per cup of liquid will give you a thin to medium consistency that's appropriate for soups or very thin sauces. 2 tablespoons per cup will give you a thicker, more gravy-like consistency.

What does adding cornstarch to cookie dough do? ›

When added to cake, cookie, pie filling and shortbread recipes, cornstarch helps create a crumbly and tender dessert-like texture. Commercially, cornstarch is often used as an anti-caking agent.

Cream of tartar stabilizes the tiny bubbles in the egg whites, by precluding the egg proteins from sticking together. It thus speeds up the egg white whipping process and contributes to a stable, billowy, glossy meringue, perfect for cookies, topping pies, and folding into cake.