How to Manage Cookie Spread from Little Cookies to Giants

This article was written for those who want to make giant downtown cookies with their mixes or recipes. 

But it also tells you how to manage those pesky cookies that come out of the oven either too thin or too thick. It's a great troubleshooting guide.

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Cookie stores have popularized giant cookies, behemoth cookies four and five inches in diameter.

Thank you. They're a lot of fun. But I don't want to run to town when I want one and I don't want to spend four or five dollars either.

We have rows and rows of cookbooks. The problem is, none of them tell me how to make giant cookies.  Both our mixes and recipes were designed for cookies a third or a fourth that size.

So we've taken to tinkering, taking mounds of dough fit for muffins and piling it on baking sheets. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.  

The problem is always spread.

While we know what causes spread, we're not great at predicting spread. 

We've settled in on a quarter-cup ice cream scoop.  With a little mound to it, we're getting well over a quarter cup of batter. That's enough to create a four or five-inch cookie of the proper thickness.

The problem is, it's not consistent. It can be too thick and doughy in the middle or too thin with crispy edges. 

You have to manage the spread, but since it's not predictable, it takes some experimentation. Start with one cookie, not the entire batch. Try a cookie. If it's not right, make some adjustments and try again. When you get it right, write it down.

The Starting Point and the Adjustments

 After experimentation, this is where we are starting. We're using that 1/4 cup ice cream scoop. You can use a 1/4 cup measuring cup.  

When we plop a mound of batter on a baking sheet, we press it down to about 3/4-inch high and bake it. That's the starting point.  If it comes out the right thickness, we record it. It probably isn't far off. If so, the adjustments are minor. You can make a number of adjustments.

Understanding and Managing Cookie Spread

Before you make adjustments, let's understand spread. 

This is where I issue a nerd science alert:

In the heat of the oven, dough spreads. The butter melts, the sugar melts and the liquids increase--the butter releases water and the sugar melts and becomes a liquid. 

At 144 degrees the structure of the eggs in the dough begins to change. The egg proteins rapidly expand into long fibers that hold the cookie together.

At the same time that the egg is changing, the leavening is working. A base and acids are reacting and creating bubbles that expand the dough and makes the cookie swell. The heat can more easily penetrate the dough and set the cookie.  Baking soda is a base and baking powder contains both a base and acid. 

As this takes place, water is turning to steam and the steam continues to lift the dough.

Starch molecules make up most of the bulk of most cookies. They give cookies a soft, melt-in-your-mouth structure while the proteins make the cookie more chewy.  Pastry flour is low in protein. Bread flour is high in protein. 

This is where the alert ends.

That's a lot of nerdy science. What really matters is that the dough continues to spread until it cooks enough to set the cookie.  The slower the cooking, the more the spread. The more liquids, including sugar, the more the spread.

Back to real life, these are factors that affect spread, factors that you can manage in your kitchen:

• Back in the old days when we had a kitchen store and handed out treats, people would say, "My cookies don't look like that. They spread too much." My response was always, "Lose the silver pan." A dark pan absorbs heat and a silver pan reflects heat. The difference can be as much as two minutes. That's two more minutes for the cookies to spread.
• The oil on the pan, melted shortening, affects spread. Wipe the excess oil off the pan between batches.
• Keep your dough cold.  Cream with cold butter. Put your dough back in the fridge between batches. The colder the dough, the thicker the cookie.
• Increase the temperature in the oven ten degrees. That will slow the spread. Decrease it to increase spread.
• Adding more sugar will increase the spread. Flour will decrease it. It won't take much.
• I love parchment paper but it does decrease spread.
• Use two pans. Let one pan cool while the other is baking. A warm pan increases spread.
• Don't mix your dough any longer than needed to combine the ingredients. Beating the dough develops the gluten and retards spreading.

That gives you a lot of elements to tinker with to get your cookies just right. It shouldn't take much. Change one element at a time.

And a final note: If you're starting with one cookie to get it right before committing the entire batch to the oven, one cookie will cook faster than a pan full. Adjust the time, you can check it early, to get it right.

The best way to check doneness is to lift one cookie off the pan, set it on rack, and then lift the rack to see if the bottom of the cookie is golden colored.  Catch it when it's gold; brown is overbaked.

Have fun with your cookies.

Here are some cookie mixes that we recommend.

• Giant Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies (Shown here)
• Snickerdoodles
• Double Fudgy Chocolate Cookies
• Rum Raisin Oat Cookies
• Dad's Favorite Chocolate Chippers
• Raspberry Lemonade Cookies
• Chocolate Walnut Cookies