Baked products, most sources say, that use all brown sugar will tend to have a slight butterscotch flavor. Since brown sugar is regular sugar with molasses, you can also substitute the other way around, too.
So if your recipe calls for one cup white sugar, swap one cup brown sugar. The sweetness level will be exactly the same, but the brown sugar may change the texture of your baked goods. You'll likely notice a more robust flavor and the color of the finished baked good may be darker as well.
Brown sugar will give your cookies a beautiful tan color and a sweet and delicious taste. However, too much will cause your cookies to become dark brown and very moist and chewy. If you added a little too much brown sugar to your cookies, your best bet is to leave it be and bake them anyway.
Brown sugar is often used in baking for the flavor and moistness it adds to baked goods. The molasses in brown sugar also helps to prevent cookies and cakes from drying out. It generally makes baked goods softer and moister.
Brown sugar has a more complex flavor, and it also makes these cookies softer and more moist. This is a drop cookie recipe, so it's really quick and easy to make and you don't need to mess around with a rolling pin or cookie cutters. They bake up super-soft and moist, and they stay that way for days!
What makes cookies fluffy and not flat? Incorporating air into the dough by creaming the butter and sugar as well as using adequate leavening agents helps make cookies fluffy when baked.
Rest the Dough A secret baker's trick is to rest your cookie dough in the fridge. You can rest it for at least an hour, which will evaporate some of the water and increase the sugar content, helping to keep your baked cookies chewy.
Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.
Using brown sugar will result in a denser, moister cookie. Brown sugar is also hygroscopic (more so than granulated sugar) and will therefore also attract and absorb the liquid in the dough.
Baking cookies quickly in a hot oven – at 375 degrees F as opposed to a lower temperature – will make for soft results. They'll bake fast instead of sitting and drying out in the oven's hot air. Ever so slightly underbaking your cookies will give you softer results than cooking them the full amount the recipe says.
The Problem: Your Oven Is Too Hot
If your cookies repeatedly turn out flat, no matter the recipe, chances are your oven is too hot. Here's what's happening. The butter melts super quickly in a too-hot oven before the other ingredients have firmed up into a cookie structure.
Problem #3: Dark and crispy cookies
If your cookies came out resembling the third one in the biscuit line up of shame, it's likely that they were made from good dough, but either baked for too long or at too high a temperature. So, they probably came out of the oven too brown and too hard.
Using lower-moisture sugar (granulated) and fat (vegetable shortening), plus a longer, slower bake than normal, produces light, crunchy cookies. That said, using a combination of butter and vegetable shortening (as in the original recipe), or even using all butter, will make an acceptably crunchy chocolate chip cookie.
Adding in an egg yolk is a great way to give your cookie more fluffiness, as an egg yolk is going to help add moisture, structure, and puff. If you think about it, the more eggs you put in, the more cake-like your cookies become (cakes use lots more eggs than cookies as they lead to a more tender dough).
Is brown sugar necessary for cookies? Most chocolate chip cookie recipes use a mix of brown sugar (for added moisture and chewiness), and granulated sugar (for that slight crisp on the edges of a cookie), but it is not necessary.
Moisture – Brown sugar in a cookie recipe helps keep the cookies moist and chewy. Leavening – It also helps the cookies to puff up when baked. As brown sugar contains an acid that reacts with baking soda that is used in a cookie recipe. Taste – brown sugar adds a specific butterscotch flavor to the cookies when baked.
When cookies are too cakey, there are two main culprits: too much leavening (baking powder or baking soda) or too much egg. If there is too much baking powder or baking soda in the dough, the cookies will rise too much when baking, creating a cakier structure. Eggs also promote a cakey structure in cookies.
Thus, if your butter is too cold, your cookies will be denser, and they will likely not spread enough in the pan when you bake them. In general, you want your butter to be cool, but not cold. The right way: Let your butter sit out for 15 minutes (but not longer — see below) before creaming.
The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.
The most common reason that cookies are tough is that the cookie dough was mixed too much. When flour is mixed into the dough, gluten begins to form. Gluten helps hold baked goods together, but too much gluten can lead to tough cookies.
Using dark brown sugar when a recipe calls for light will give your final product a more robust taste and a darker color, and it might slightly affect the texture.
Cookies are usually chewy and soft, while cakes are light and fluffy. The difference in texture is due to the ingredients used in their respective recipes. Cookies usually contain more fat and sugar, which increases their moisture and chewiness.
If the recipe calls for softened butter and you accidentally melted butter instead of softening it, it's best that you set aside the melted butter for future use. Both kinds of butter will yield a very different final result in every baked good.