The Science of Cookies (2024)

FAQs

What is the science of baking cookies? ›

As the butter melts, the cookie's structure loosens, so that the water in the dough is able to combine with the baking soda, dissolving it. The baking soda then reacts to the acidic components present in brown sugar, creating gases that cause the cookie to rise.

The Maillard reaction

At 140°C, your biscuits will begin to brown. This is due to the Maillard reaction which occurs when proteins and sugars break down at high temperatures. This not only changes the appearance of your biscuits, but also changes the flavour and texture.

Flour is the main ingredient that provides structure in a cookie – without it, there would be no cookie! The gluten in flour forms a web of sorts – the framework that catches the air bubbles/gasses given off during rising. This helps provide the structure.

Sugar Reacts With Heat and Proteins to Create the Perfect Crust. You know your cake is done baking when you pull it out of the oven and see that perfect golden brown crust on top. That sweet, toasted crust is the result of a chemical reaction between sugars and proteins called the Maillard reaction.

Try using baking powder instead of baking soda. Baking soda encourages spreading while baking powder puffs the cookies up. If your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would use 3 to 4 teaspoons of baking powder.

Although sugar may seem like a simple ingredient, it plays a very important and complex role in cookie dough. It contributes to both texture and flavor in many ways: It melts in the heat of the oven to increase spread, and it creates little air pockets in the dough to expand and make cookies rise.

If your cookies come out looking more like biscuits, you've likely added too much flour. Our cookies didn't expand much from the rolled-up balls we put on the baking sheet. They also didn't brown as well as the other cookies. It doesn't take much—in this case, my mom and I added just 3/4 cup extra flour to the dough.

Keep the oven hot.

When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside. We default to our Land O Lakes® Salted Butter when baking biscuits.

What makes cookies fluffy and not flat? ›

Room temperature butter is just the right consistency to incorporate air when it's creamed with sugar. These trapped air pockets result in risen, fluffy cookies. If the butter is any warmer, it won't incorporate enough air and your cookies will have less rise.

A cookie made with extra egg yolk (or, in this case, only egg yolk), will be lighter and chewier than a cookie made with whole eggs. The cookies will also have a richer flavor thanks to the added fat in egg yolk.

Chemistry, as you mix different edible chemicals to create dough or batter, with tiny air bubbles trapped inside. Biology, as the culture of yeast provides carbon dioxide to make your bread rise. And physics, as those trapped gases expand and give the rise to the bakes.

In bread making, the yeast organisms expel carbon dioxide and alcohol as they feed off of sugars. As the carbon dioxide is formed, the bubbles are trapped by gluten in the wheat flour; this is why the dough volume increases or 'rises'.

What Eggs Do in Baking Recipes. Eggs play an important role in everything from cakes and cookies to meringues and pastry cream — they create structure and stability within a batter, they help thicken and emulsify sauces and custards, they add moisture to cakes and other baked goods, and can even act as glue or glaze.

Baking powder is a two-in-one chemical leavening that combines a powdered alkali (sodium bicarbonate) with a powdered acid (originally, tartaric acid). When moistened in a dough or batter, a chemical reaction takes place that produces carbon dioxide gas, inflating cookies, cakes, and pancakes.

When the materials are heated they undergo a chemical change. The reaction is non reversible. The sugar, flour and eggs can no longer be separated. The properties of the materials have changed so it is a chemical change.

Sugar creates texture

Sugar easily binds with water, which accomplishes two main things. 1) It locks in moisture, keeping your baked goods from drying out; and 2) It inhibits the development of gluten which keeps your cookies, cakes and sweet breads softer. Variances in sugar type will create different outcomes here.

Cookies as a Model for Fusion

Fusion occurs when heat is added to atoms, giving them enough energy to collide and stick together. In this case, the microwave will add the energy to heat the “atoms” (cookies).