3 ingredient mini butter cookies (2024)

FAQs

What does too little butter do to cookies? ›

Adding too little butter can cause the cookies to be tough and crumbly. You should use unsalted butter to control the salt content, but if you only have salted on hand, reduce the amount of added salt accordingly. Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown.

Adjust baking time to achieve the cookie texture desired. A little less time produces chewier cookies, a little more time makes them crispy. If you prefer softer cookies, remove them from the oven while they are still slightly under baked. Always check for doneness at the minimum baking time.

Shortening traps more air bubbles and has a higher melting point than butter, so recipes using shortening tend to produce baked goods with more lift and that hold their shape during baking. Interior texture will also be softer and lighter.

Butter cookies (probably unsurprisingly) also contain a higher percentage of butter while sugar cookies have a higher flour to butter/fat ratio. Here is my favorite recipe for sugar cookies (and it's a good one, just check out all those 5 star ratings!).

Melted butter will make your cookies delightfully dense on the inside and crisp on the edges. This is because cookie dough with melted butter will give you extra moisture and spread out more during baking, giving you a softer inside and with thinner, crisper edges.

What about substituting oil for butter? Depending on the type of oil, it can add complex flavor and welcome moisture to your baked goods. A good rule of thumb is to replace about 3/4 of the butter in a recipe with olive, canola, or vegetable oil. (If the recipe calls for 1 cup butter, use ¾ cup oil.)

“Cornstarch is a game changer for cookie baking,” confirms Brian Hart Hoffman, editor in chief of Bake from Scratch. “You can count on [it for] a softer and more tender crumb.”

Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies. Why use melted butter? Melted butter creates cookies with a different texture compared to cookies made with softened or creamed butter.

Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.

Due to differing ratios, shortbread cookies are crumblier and more "sandy" than butter cookies, which are firm and solid enough to be iced. This mostly has to do with flour and eggs. Shortbread doesn't use eggs, while butter cookies do, making butter cookie dough more pliable and robust than its shortbread counterpart.

Which butter is best for cookies? ›

The best butter for your baked goods depends on what type of recipe you're whipping up. Unsalted, American-style butter works well in goods like cookies, pound cakes and pancakes that require the high-fat content of conventional butter and more flexibility with salt and flavor content.

In that role, white sugar aerates the dough when creamed with butter for thick and puffy cookies. Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more.

The higher the proportion of butter to other ingredients, the more tender your cookie will be (and consequently, the more it will spread as it bakes). I found that a ratio of 1 part flour to 1 part sugar to 0.8 parts butter was about right for a cookie that has moderate spread and doesn't end up cakey.

Also, underbaking them by a minute or 2 will help them retain a dense, chewy bite, explains Jenny McCoy, pastry baking arts chef-instructor at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York. Adding more moisture to your dough in the form of extra butter, egg yolks, or brown sugar will make your cookies even softer.

Butter also plays a critical role in cookie structure; the fat and moisture can enhance or inhibit gluten development, which directly impacts the shape, spread, and texture in your cookies.