Whats the secret to baking cookies that stay soft?
Making Your Cookies Soft and Chewy Tips for soft, chewy cookies: Do not over mix the dough or use too much flour. Bake cookies the minimum amount of time, even though the center may look slightly underbaked. Let cookies stand on baking sheet for one to three minutes to continue to bake, then remove to cooling rack. Store soft cookies in an airtight container. Do not store soft chewy cookies with crisp type cookies. Use shiny aluminum cookie sheets, not dark colored ones. In my experience the second tip helps the most, as does refrigerating the dough for a little bit before baking. Eschewing the whole “storage” thing by channeling your inner glutton helps, too.
I vote for what people are calling underbaking but that is really properly to be called “stop overbaking them.” And there are a few ways to do that. First, get an oven thermometer and a real kitchen timer (ahem, all of you out there, stop using the minute hand on the kitchen wall clock) and run some tests. What temperature is your oven inside when the knob says it should be 350? Don’t be surprisedif it’s 400. Once you get your oven to read properly on the inside, bake the cookies exactly as the recipe tells you. If your cookies are still not to your taste, lop off a minute of two of the cooking time in your next round. Now, you might see why people say all this stuff about butter and changing baking racks, the best way is pretty time consuming!
Looks like I joined the chorus late, but I, too, underbake my cookies to keep them soft. Ditto the oven thermometer to check the exact temp of your oven. When I first started baking, I followed the directions exactly and no matter what I baked, it would come out too hard or worse, singed. I finally invested in an oven thermometer and it was only then that I discovered that 350F in my oven was actually 450F!
