You Need These Tools To Bake Cookies The Right Way

 

Baking cookies doesn't need to be complicated. It should be a fairly simple process: choose a recipe, gather the necessary ingredients, get your equipment and bake! However, not having the proper kitchen tools for baking means that you will have to work a lot harder to create a good batch of cookies. No one wants to work harder than they have to in the kitchen, so save yourself some aggravation and make sure you have the basic tools needed to bake cookies.

A Good Stand Mixer

You are going to have to mix together ingredients to make cookies, that is a basic part of baking. You can tough it out and mix everything by hand, but that can be a lot of work. If you are making a stiff cookie dough, you may find yourself exhausted before you have even put the cookies in the oven. A hand mixer will work, but for best results you should be using a stand mixer. Stand mixers will have strong motors and the power to mix together dense ingredients. They also do a great job of creaming butters, blending things together and making sure that all of the ingredients are well mixed. They will cost more than a hand mixer, or a wooden spoon, but you will be glad that you have a good stand mixer on hand when you are ready to bake.

Good Cookie Sheets

While there are a lot of cookie sheets to choose from, there are also a lot of really crappy cookie sheets. The cookie sheet is the tool that will hold your cookie while baking. You need it to distribute the heat evenly, not warp while baking and be easy to pull out of a hot oven. There will always be arguments about non stick cookie sheets versus aluminum, copper versus steel. All will work fine as long as they are heavy duty and able to handle high temperatures for a long period of time. Find a good quality cookie sheet (also called a baking sheet) and stick with it.

The RIGHT Measuring Cups

Yes, you might be using the wrong measuring cups. When you need to add one cup of liquid to a recipe, you want to use a measuring cup designed for liquids. Using a measuring cup meant for dry ingredients may get you the one cup you need, but that means you have to fill the cup right to the rim and get it to the bowl without spilling. Then you need to pour it into the mixing bowl without dribbling. Good bakers never mix measuring cups. Use a cup meant for liquids when you are measuring liquids, and use a cup meant for dry ingredients when measuring dry ingredients.

Other Must-Have Baking Tools

While the three items mentioned above are critical baking tools, there are a few others that you should look at having on hand when you are ready to bake cookies. Mixing Bowls Your stand mixer will have a mixing bowl, but you want to have others. Often you will mix dry ingredients together before adding them to wet ingredients. One or two extra mixing bowls will make your life easier. Oven Mitts Common sense tells you that the cookie sheet in the oven will be hot when it comes out. Use oven mitts, don't rely on a towel. Wire Cooling Rack Once you have removed your cookies from the oven, you need to let them cool. Having a good wire cooling rack will help the cookies keep their shapes while cooling.