What Happens If You Add Too Much Butter To Chocolate Chip Cookies - Tasting Table (2024)

FAQs

What Happens If You Add Too Much Butter To Chocolate Chip Cookies - Tasting Table? ›

Although butter generally makes it all better, bakers who go overboard with it are dooming their cookies to a greasy and crumbly texture.

Too much butter makes cookies turn out just as you'd expect: very buttery. This batch of cookies was cakey in the middle, but also airy throughout, with crispy edges.

Butter gives flavor, tenderness and flaky layers to baked goods. It can also bring a bit of structure and rise. For instance, a chocolate chip cookie dough incorporates butter and sugar to incorporate air into the final result.

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.

Butter doesn't affect just the flavour of your cookies, it has a major impact on their texture and structure, too.

Too Much or Too Soft of Butter

If the butter yields too easily to pressure and appears melted and oily, it will produce a silky batter that rises too soon and collapses. Your cake will have big air pockets and an uneven texture.

One mistake that is often made when baking cookies is using too much butter when softening it. This can cause the cookies to spread too much and become thin and crispy. Another mistake that is sometimes made is not using enough butter, which can cause the cookies to be dry and crumbly.

Melted butter is best suited for drop doughs such as chocolate chip, peanut butter, and sugar cookies, as well as most cookie bars. You can usually adapt recipes that don't originally call for melted butter to use this technique if you're looking for an even fudgier texture.

The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.

If you use too much butter, the cookies will end up flat and greasy. And if you use too little flour, the amount of butter and sugar will be proportionally too high, meaning the cookies will spread for the aforementioned reasons.

Why are my chocolate chip cookies flat? ›

OVEN IS TOO HOT

If your cookies consistently come out flat, you may have selected the wrong baking temperature. If you bake cookies using too much heat, the fats in the dough begin to melt before the other ingredients can cook together and form your cookie's rise.

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. In short, the temperature of your butter for cookies directly impacts how cakey, crispy, or flaky your cookies will be.

This is a much more common creaming method mistake, so watch out for it. Over-creamed butter and sugar adds in too much air and alters the final texture – typically to be more gummy and dense.

Once the cookies are completely cooled after baking, put them on a clean baking sheet with a paper towel underneath them. This helps to absorb any extra butter and prevent butter bleed (more on that below).

Over-creamed butter and sugar adds in too much air and alters the final texture – typically to be more gummy and dense. Sometimes over-creaming can produce cakes, cupcakes, or cookies that collapse upon baking or while cooling if the mixture is well and truly over-creamed (where it looks like curdled milk).

Cookies spread because the fat in the cookie dough melts in the oven. If there isn't enough flour to hold that melted fat, the cookies will over-spread. Spoon and level that flour or, better yet, weigh your flour. If your cookies are still spreading, add an extra 2 Tablespoons of flour to the cookie dough.