Cookies

Hi marilynlynn, I guess what you'll find to be an acceptable result depends what you are shooting for. If the aim is to produce chocolate chip cookies that mimic the commercial product, then you'd most likely have to adhere to a pre-determined recipe. If you like to experiment, though, you should be able to produce your own custom-made monsters indelibly stamped with the authority of your creativity. Granted, cookies should be solid, not soft and spongy like a cake. They should be sufficiently dense to require conscious effort to lift off the plate, and they should break into bite-sized pieces with the application of reasonable force, with each piece should be oozing with texture and flavor. When you say your cookies come out flat, straight away I'm thinking - more sugar, more chocolate, more butter, more coconut, more oatmeal... all things that bulk cookies out with chewy chocolatey goodness, and make them more crumbly to boot. You can't have too much chocolate in a chocolate chip cookie - even to the point where it's reduced to a conglomeration of chocolate chunks held together by a tapestry of cookie batter. Let you hair down, girl, and have at it! It's your kitchen - be the best you can be, and make your cookie customers proud!

I use butter flavored Crisco instead of butter or margarine and my cookies always turn out big and fat instead of flat.

Alton Brown did a whole episode about this on Good Eats on the Food Network. If you go to their website, they might have highlights or something. Basically, you could use butter or margarine to get flat cookies. If you used shortening, the cookies weren't flat. And there was some third thing he used, but I forgot what that was. I'm pretty sure it wasn't oil. I like the flat cookies myself. Mine never turn out like that though. But I do so many things different with my cookies that I'm not sure you'd want to duplicate them... I add egg replacer (powdered, no eggs in it kind) instead of eggs. I use soymilk instead of regular milk. And if I'm making a cookie that is fruit flavored anyway, sometimes I'll substitute half of the oil as applesauce (but ONLY with fruit flavored things, otherwise sometimes you can taste it and it's really weird).

Go to the store and buy some :-D Actually there was this place I went to this one bakery that had these deep dish cookies that were sooooo big and soooo good! We split one in half to share and I still had to save some of mine for later. Maybe search for "Deep Dish Cookie Recipes" and see if you can find some.

Don't leave them in the oven for so long. I usually take mine out before the package time says and leave them onm the cookie pan for a few minutes before removing to cool. Also don't open the oven door to check constantly, that will cause them to go flat too.

Mornin, Marilyn! I haven't read any other responses yet, so I may be repeating someone else, but I think you're supposed to chill the dough before you bake the cookies. I'm not much of a baker, but that is what I THINK you do. good luck, darlin. And when you get them done, hey, send some my way, ok? :)

It took me SEVERAL batches of cookies before I finally solved this very problem. Too much baking soda = flat cookie Applesauce instead of oil = cake cookie Too much flour = cake cookie or hard cookie I finally mushed a few recipes together and came up with my own which comes out pretty decent I think. Not flat and not cake, somewhere in between. I believe the magic part was putting in the required baking soda and SLOWLY adding flour until the dough is moist and sticky but not too dry. I don't have it memorized so if you want it I'll have to get it from home. Just let me know if you'd like me to message it to you. -Tink