Everyone loves a good, tasty cookie. These snacks have a variety of ingredients, usually based on the baker’s preference. The texture that cookies come in also differs, but what do you do in cases where you want crispy cookies, but they keep turning out soft and chewy?
You can rebake cookies to make them crispy. Some cookies only need about five minutes of rebaking to get their fresh, melting, and warm taste back and become crispy again. However, others may need about ten to 15 minutes in an oven set to 300-350 °F (149-177 °C).
The rest of this article will further explain how to make crispy cookies and how to rebake cookies to make them crispy. Keep reading to also find out why cookies go soft and how to preserve your rebaked crispy cookies.
How To Rebake Cookies To Make Them Crispy
Even when you strictly follow a recipe, your cookies can surprise you. It can be very annoying to end up with cookies that are either not as crispy as imagined or grew soft over time. A rebake can fix this and restore the crispiness. Here’s how you can rebake your cookies to make them crispy:
1. Heat the Oven to 300–350 °F (149-177 °C)
The exact temperature depends on the state of the already baked cookies. If they’d been baked brown initially, a moderate to low temperature is satisfactory. It’s pretty important to get perfect heat for cookies because it largely defines how your cookies turn out.
2. Use a Wire Rack
You should use a wire rack to prevent overbaking your cookies. If you use a hot pan, it’ll continue baking the cookies and end up overbaking them, even when they’re out of the oven. On the other hand, using a wire rack will get air to circulate over the cookies, so they get baked just right. This way, the cookies stand a higher chance of being crispy.
3. Rebake for the Right Period
The duration for rebaking should depend on how well-baked the cookies initially were. You can rebake well-done cookies in as few as five minutes. If the cookies are light-brown, on the other hand, they may need ten to 15 minutes in the oven to get properly crispy.
Keep peeking in on the color of the cookies, so you can take them out as soon as they’re golden brown.
4. Observe the Cookies Closely
Because this is the second baking round, you have to pay extra attention to the baking process. A slight lag in the check-in time can make or mar the cookies, so ideally, you should stay with them all through while rebaking. If you can’t do that, though, it’s crucial that you check in on them frequently.
5. Keep the Oven Door Shut
Keeping the oven door shut is equally vital in achieving crispy results during rebaking. It’ll help keep the oven temperature stable and ensure even heat circulation for crisp cookie results. This is where an oven light comes in handy because it allows you to look in on the cookies without constantly opening the door to check on them.
Tips on Making Crispy Cookies
While some people want their cookies soft and chewy, others prefer their cookies crispier. Here are a few tips that’ll help you make super crispy cookies:
- Cut out eggs from the baking recipe: Don’t use white or brown eggs in your baking if you want crispy cookies. Eggs naturally contain moisture, which’ll cause your cookies to go brittle and soft. For crunchy and crispy cookies, no eggs should be used.
- Use less flour: Flour adds the main texture and fluff to cookies. If you use too much, though, it could make your cookies tender and mildly soggy. Cookies with less flour are usually crispier.
- Bake immediately after forming the dough: After the ingredients are mixed and your dough is ready, bake it directly. Leaving the dough unbaked could make your cookies turn out soft and chewy instead of being crisp.
- Bake at a lower oven temperature: If the oven temperature is too high, the required heat doesn’t spread across cookies for proper baking. Baking at a lower temperature will ensure cookies are adequately spread before they begin to rise for evenness and crispiness.
- Avoid using brown sugar: Brown sugar has extra molasses, so it contains more moisture than white sugar. Brown sugar also has more acid that forms a reaction with the baking soda that helps cookies rise. That’s why it’s not advisable to use brown sugar if you’re hoping for crispy cookies. White sugar, on the other hand, helps in creating a crusty feel and gives cookies a crispy, crunchy taste.
- Use all-purpose flour: All-purpose flour is very versatile, and it has a high protein content that forms more gluten. With more gluten formed, the cookie dough gets more elastic. The elasticity in the dough forms a huge part of what the cookies feel and taste like, so with all-purpose flour, crisping and browning are easier.
Why Do Cookies Go Soft?
Cookies go soft because they absorb the humidity in the air. The tiny drops of water they absorb from the atmosphere will form moisture in the cookies and cause them to get soft.
Other flour-made snacks like bread or cakes become stiff with more time spent in the air, but cookies are different. As they spend more time in the air, they absorb moisture and get softer.
How To Preserve Your Rebaked Crispy Cookies
After rebaking your cookies to get them nice and crispy again, you should keep them from losing that crunch. Here are tips for preserving your crispy cookies:
- Before storing the cookies, ensure they completely cool down.
- Store the cookies in an airtight cookie jar, so they don’t get moist.
- Don’t store cookies in a plastic container. A glass cookie jar will do nicely.
- A piece of white bread can be a good preservative. It helps to absorb the moisture that could soften the cookies.
- If you bake different cookie flavors, separate them and store them in different containers.
- You can freeze your cookies to maintain their crispness for up to two months.
Conclusion
Follow these steps to get the crisp back in your cookies by rebaking them. Cheers to eating crunchier cookies!
