2 Simple tips for better rolled cookies

It is a great time to make rolled sugar cookies. Traditionally we make rolled sugar cookies for Valentine's Day every year. Our children always enjoy cutting, frosting, and decorating the cookies. Our cookie hearts must taste great and able to support the weight of frosting and a dozen candy hearts. Often, a few of the cookies barely hold the weight of the candy placed on top.

I am always in the search for a better rolled cookie recipe. It must be crisp on the outside yet soft in the center. This year I found one that you don't even have to refrigerate. (We hate waiting.) I decided to use a few bits of food science I've learned while experimenting with pie crust to enhance this recipe and I was not disappointed.

First, butter is butter right? WRONG! I typically just buy cheap store brand butter. However, in my search for the perfect pie crust I discovered that not all butter is the same. The ratio of water, fat, and milk solids can vary from brand to brand. While these small variations seem like they should not matter, they can cause substantial variations in taste and texture. My favorite butter for baking is Kerrygold. Using quality butter is key to better baking.

Second, you should weigh your dry ingredients. I have had success with this previously and thought I would try it on the cookie recipe.

The recipe called for three cups of flour. So how do you convert this to weight?

I discovered that the nutritional information indicates the weight and measurement. According to the nutritional information for King Arthur flour 1/4 cup is equal to 30 grams.

This means I would need 360 grams of flour. That was easy enough but I wanted to know how much of a difference there was if I just measured. So I put three cups of flour in a bowl and weighed it. It weighed 433 Grams. A little nerdy math later with my eleven year old and we figured out that if I just used a measuring cup and did not weigh the flour I would end up with around 20 percent more flour than I actually needed.

While you think this is no big deal, too much flour in this particular recipe would cause the cookie to be too dry and crumbly. I really enjoy shortbread cookies but that is not what we are trying to make.

The recipe also called for one cup of sugar which according to the nutritional info should weigh 200 grams. Just using the measuring cup it weighed 226 grams - or an additional 2 tablespoons!

With this in mind I weighed out all my dry ingredients for this recipe and wanted to see how it would come out by using this method instead of using a measuring cups.

If you don't already have a scale, click here to get the one we bought. It is easy to use, has various types of measurements, and easy to clean.

The dough had a nice slightly sticky texture that tasted good and was easy to roll out. Just as the recipe promised, no refrigeration was necessary. We even took this opportunity to use the heart-shaped cookie cutter Mr. Folks 3D printed for us earlier this week.

The cookies cooked up perfectly! They held their shape, had a slightly crisp outside with a soft chewy center. They will be perfect for frosting and eating.

Click here to visit the original recipe - there are some great tips there!

Try it out and let us know how it worked for you! Do you have any other tips or tricks? Comment below!