Cookies can be a great choice if you have a sweet tooth. It falls under the category of desserts. Kids and even youngsters love to snack on them. They are made with flour, but now we have many other options to switch to a healthier version. They are easy to make at home if you have an oven.
Cookies can be a healthy snack if we use the correct ingredients, and it is easy to bake them at home. We can regulate the sugar level in them if we make them ourselves. They can be made in different ways, but one must know when they are done.
1. What Are Cookies?
Cookies are a kind of dessert; we can have them anytime. Everyone should try a cookie at least once in their whole life, and I promise they will instantly fall in love with it.
Cookies are made with refined flour and caster sugar. Add baking powder or baking soda to the flour to make them perfect. Eggs to make the cookies, but if you don’t eat eggs, you can skip it. However, butter is necessary when baking cookies because the creamy texture would be lost forever without that.
The cookies have many different recipes. They keep getting better as we are adding other new ingredients to it. The chocolate chip cookies are the most famous ones because of the chocolaty texture and flavor.
We will try to explain the difference between all the different kinds of cookies available in stores and the ones we can make at home. Enjoy the cookies as much as you want, but it is also better to eat anything in moderation.
This can prevent us from harming our bodies in one way or another. In this post, we will talk about the correct way to make cookies and how to tell if cookies are done or not.
2. How to Prepare Cookies?
When baking something, we must be careful about a few things, like the temperature. It is very important to follow the steps carefully to avoid messing up the particular recipe.
- Strain the refined flour to remove the lumps and make it airy.
- After this, we must add baking powder and soda to the flour. Mix everything.
- Melt some butter sticks in a bowl and then add sugar to it.
- Now, you can also add one or two eggs. Take a whisk and whisk it until it changes its color to white and gets a lot thicker.
- Put some water in the flour mix, too. Now add the flour mix to the bowl of butter and mix it in one particular direction only.
- Always remember to preheat the oven to make them perfect. Now put the cookie dough in small balls on the baking sheet and put the tray on the middle shelf of the oven.
This way, we can ensure the cookies cook evenly from all directions. We can also check it occasionally through the oven’s glass door.
3. Some Different Kinds of Cookies
There are many different kinds of cookies, and we can easily make all of them just with a bit of practice. In this section, we will talk about all the types of cookies and the right way to make them at home.
3.1. Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies are the most famous among the people almost everywhere. It can add a delicious taste to our essential cookies.
- Start by straining flour in a big bowl to let air pass.
- Now, mix both baking soda and baking powder in the flour.
- Melt a lot of butter in a separate bowl because butter will always be the key component, no matter which recipe we follow.
- You should have some chocolate chips for this recipe, but if you don’t find any, you can cut your favorite chocolate into small pieces.
- On the other side, separate one or two egg york. You can also add vanilla essence for the mild smell and cover the smell of eggs.
- When you see all the elements are ready, you can put the oven to preheat and start with the recipe.
To ensure that cookies are done, check the appearance of the chocolate chip cookies.
Add a few vanilla drops of essence to the bowl of melted butter. Remember that we only use unsalted butter while making the cookie dough. Now add the sugar to the bowl of butter and mix it with a whisk.
When perfectly mixed, add the flour to the bowl and mix it. Now, add your chocolate chips or chocolate pieces to the cookie dough. Keep the cookie dough rest at room temperature for some time.
Once done, put some butter on the baking sheet and place the dough balls at the same distance. Leave some space for each cookie ball to rise while baking.
Put the tray carefully on the middle rack of the oven and bake it for a few minutes. Once ready, take them out and let them sit at room temperature until they completely cool down. Never put the hot cookies in the refrigerator to speed up the cooling process, as it can mess with their crunch.
Once they cool down, you can enjoy them with some milk or coffee. Everyone will love it the first time they will try it.
3.2. Peanut Butter Cookies
We can say this recipe is easy and healthy because of the peanut butter in it.
Let’s start with the recipe.
- Start by measuring the flour with the help of a measuring cup. Now strain to add air bubbles, and then add baking powder.
- Melt one stick of unsalted butter in another bowl and add the brown or white sugar. Mix them and then add an egg york with vanilla essence.
- At this point, add a large portion of peanut butter and mix. We can add the smooth peanut butter or the one with crumbs.
- When everything is mixed thoroughly, add the flour to the butter bowl. The peanut butter cookie dough should be very smooth after mixing everything because of the peanut butter, but if this is not the case, that means you have made a mistake.
- You can instantly make peanut butter cookie dough balls or keep them in the fridge for a few hours. Now, put the balls carefully on the baking sheet and bake.
When you think they are done, take them out and let them cool because if you try to move them, they are still hot and will break into small pieces. You can even give the peanut butter cookies to your kids because they are healthy and safe.
3.3. Oatmeal Cookies
This recipe is one of the most healthy cookie recipes because it has less butter and more oats flakes.
- Start by taking the wheat flour instead of the fine flour. First, add air bubbles to the wheat flour by filtering it. Mix baking powder with the wheat flour to make the cookies rise while baking.
- Add vanilla essence to the flour and the butter. Don’t melt the butter because this recipe doesn’t need that.
- After adding the butter, mix it well, but the dough will still not stick together, and we would need a binding agent for that.
- Add brown or regular sugar and the oats flake to the bowl. You can also add raisins to them, although they are different, so it is your choice to add them.
- To bind everything, we will add some milk, and when the dough is ready, roll them into small balls. Now put them on the baking sheet and bake.
It is crucial to regulate the temperature of the oven while baking cookies. If you open the oven and the cookies are still not ready, cook them for a few more minutes.
They are a healthy snack because it has oats and wheat flour in it. This is the perfect recipe to try at least once for everyone who likes to bake.
3.4. Bar Cookies
This is one of the exciting recipes to try because, over time, people get bored of the same round of cookies. We always like to try the same thing in a different way to add some variety to our lives. We can say bar cookies are a unique way to change the appearance of the cookies.
They are easy and quick to make at home if you are already familiar with baking.
- Start by straining some fine flour to add air, then add the baking powder and baking soda to the bowl.
- Now, we have to take another bowl to mix the melted butter with vanilla essence and a pinch of salt in it. After this, add the castor sugar.
- When both bowls are ready, add the flour to the melted butter bowl along with the chocolate chips. You can also add your favorite chocolate instead of chocolate chips.
- Mix everything until the dough is smooth. Now, grease a baking tray with butter.
- Then, add the chocolate chip cookie bar dough to the tray and press it down with the help of a silicon spatula.
- Decorate it with chocolate chips on top of the dough, then bake it as it is.
After baking it, let it cool down, and don’t try to cut it now. When the tray is back to its average temperature, take a bread knife and cut the pieces into small square pieces.
3.5. Nutella Cookies
If you are also a big fan of Nutella and always try to find a way to add it to different things, then this portion is perfect for you. We will talk about how to make Nutella-filled cookies with ease.
- Start by preparing like any other cookie dough. When the dough is ready, take a small portion in your hand and flat it with the help of both of your palms.
- Now, take some Nutella in a spoon, put it in the middle of the dough, and seal it slowly.
- Roll the dough gently between your hands and put it on the greased cooking tray when filling it.
- Now, you can bake it like the essential cookies, and when they are ready, you can enjoy that particular Nutella-filled cookie.
- If you want to modify this recipe into a cookie bar, put one thick layer of cookie dough at the bottom of the cooking tray.
- Cover the first layer with Nutella, then add one more cookie dough layer. Now you can bake it and enjoy it.
4. How Do You Know If Cookies Are Done?
If you are wondering about it, there are many ways to tell when the cookies are ready to take out of the oven.
4.1. By Observing the Cookies
This is the most straightforward answer to your question of how to know if cookies are done. When you put the cookies in the oven for a particular time, you can observe the color of the cookies.
If the cookies are light brown even after our estimated time, they are still raw, and we need to make them in the oven for a few more minutes.
When the color of the cookies is dark brown, it means that they are perfectly baked, and we can take them out of the oven now.
Please note that if you are baking dark-colored cookies, don’t rely on the fact that they will turn dark brown. This is because the dark colors make it challenging to recognize the difference between them. If you cannot see through the oven door, you can open it and check the cookies.
After doing this, you can return them if they are not ready.
4.2. By Observing the Edges
The edges of a cookie can help to know if cookies are done. We have to observe the edges of the cookies to see if they are cooked. If the color of the cookies is too dark, it might not work, but it will work perfectly for the other colors.
See the edges of the cookies carefully to know it. Avoid taking them out of the oven if they are still not ready to eat. It will be easy for new learners to apply this criterion to their cookies.
4.3. Toothpick Test
This is the oldest way to check whether cookies are done. Anyone who has just started their baking journey can use this technique while making cookies or baking a cake.
For this test, we only need a wooden toothpick, which we will use to pass through the food item we are trying to bake.
If baking cookies, we must poke the wooden toothpick in a cookie to know whether it is baked. If the cookies are raw from the inside, then the cookie dough will stick to the wooden toothpick.
This process will inform us that the cookies still need to be baked for a few more minutes. Only put them back in the oven for a couple of minutes at the right temperature to avoid getting burnt cookies.
However, remember that this technique will not work on Nutella-filled cookies because of the chocolaty filling.
5. A Healthier Option
If you are one of the people who like to eat healthy but don’t want to eat the same thing repeatedly, then you should learn here how to make the healthier version of an essential cookie. We must replace some ingredients with healthier ones to reverse their effect on our bodies.
Using an egg is perfectly fine because it has protein, an essential element to add to our diet if we work out regularly. Now, if it comes to the chocolate chips in the cookies, I would say a little chocolate wouldn’t harm you, but it is good for our health if eaten in moderation.
As we all know, generally, fine flour is used to make cookies, but to make it a better option, we could replace it with wheat flour. It might not taste the same, but it will still taste better. Instead of white sugar, try to use brown sugar because it is not bad for our health. Add some honey as a sweetener and observe if it works for you.
The butter in the cookies is one of the key ingredients, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t harm us. Butter has a lot of fat in it, and that can be very harmful to people suffering from heart disease or dealing with high cholesterol.
Try to choose low-fat butter or use less than the recommended quantity. If you want, find an alternative for the butter as a whole.
Have a Great Snack Time with Cookies!
Cookie is a great snack to enjoy at any time of the day. Cookies technically fall under the category of sweet. Children like to have it all the time. We can buy the best quality cookies from any bakery or shop, but it is better to eat them fresh.
It is super easy to bake cooking by following the basic baking rules and keeping an eye on them while baking them. We need fine flour along with baking soda and baking powder. We also need some vanilla essence along with the butter and sugar.
If someone wants to modify this recipe, they can add chocolate chips to it, and it will add a chocolatey texture to your cookies. If you dislike chocolate chips, add your favorite chocolate to it. There are many different kinds of cookie recipes available. Try them all and enjoy.
Observing cookies, their edges, or toothpick tests can determine if cookies are done or not.
Last Updated on by Pragya Chakrapani