I want CHEWY cookies, not shortbread ...

December 20, 2022 3:33 PM

Please help me adjust my cookie recipe; I'm lousy with estimations! See inside ...

My friend made these cookies and they were awesome, because they were CHEWY. As in, CHEWY COOKIES. They are basically CHEWY sugar cookies with cherry jello mixed in. I asked for the recipe, and this is what I got:

1-1/2 cups butter
1 cup sugar
1 package cherry jello
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
sugar crystals
halved maraschino cherries

Do the usual mixing of butter sugar egg jello etc., add the flour etc., roll in sugar crystals and press the maraschino cherries in the center to resemble thumbprint cookies. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

Even when I was trying the recipe, I thought that 4 cups flour was a lot. Sure enough, the cookies came out like crumbing shortbread and not CHEWY. But when I asked my friend about it, she was adamant that it was 4 cups of flour.

So! I would like to adjust this recipe so that it is CHEWY. The internet tells me that I should try two eggs and not one, or 2 cups flour or maybe 2-1/4 or maybe 2-1/2, or 1 cup butter instead of 1-1/2 ... argh! I'm lousy with estimating these things even on a good day, but I would so much like to have these yummy, cherry, CHEWY cookies. Thanks!!

posted by Melismata to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

There was a question about the reverse of this just the other day (why does this recipe tell me to do this to the butter)!

Melt the butter and then let it get back up to room temperature.
posted by aniola at 4:01 PM on December 20, 2022

This recipe looks similar to yours, but uses less flour indeed (2.75 c). It uses a mix of butter and oil as well. The author says that the oil is a replacement for egg and that the oil makes them chewier. I'm not sure ...

If you don't want an all-new recipe, maybe ask your friend how she handled her butter (room temp, cold, melted?) and whether she chilled the dough before baking. Both of those can very much affect the consistency.
posted by hydra77 at 4:13 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

If I were playing with this I'd try adding another egg first. I'd maybe ask her what size eggs she uses (a jumbo egg is really different from a medium). Also, did you use plain old actual jello (the kind made with gelatin?) I could imagine kosher or vegan jellos that use carrageenan or agar behaving differently here.
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:14 PM on December 20, 2022

Also, volumetric measurement of flour is notoriously inaccurate; weight is much better for consistent measurement. Not sure if that's the entire problem, but it could be a contributing factor, if she measures out sifted flour or whatever.
posted by Aleyn at 6:01 PM on December 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

I would imagine you have already ruled these out, but just to check the obvious:

• what kind of flour?
• you used 1 1/2 cups of butter, not 1 1/2 sticks*, yes?

* - generally one stick of American butter = 1/2 cup

I've never made those cookies before, but one egg and no other liquid ingredients (I'm not counting a teaspoon of vanilla..) seems like very little for a recipe calling for four cups of flour, even with three sticks of butter.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:27 PM on December 20, 2022 [6 favorites]

seems like very little for a recipe calling for four cups of flour, even with three sticks of butter.

I made some molasses cookies last night that are supposed to come out chewy (reader, they did) and yeah, for a bit over 4 cups of flour it called for 2 eggs and a 1/2 cup of molasses in addition to the 1 1/2 cup of shortening. The recipe I used had a tip to use shortening instead of butter since it has a higher melting point than butter and doesn't steam, blah blah blah, so I was thinking to suggest that but with the large discrepancy in total liquid involved in the recipes I'm not what part makes the difference
posted by LionIndex at 6:56 PM on December 20, 2022

So, going by the typical Toll House recipe I've made for the last nearly 30 years, I'd say your ratios look ok for a chewy cookie (1 cup butter: 2 cups flour: 2 eggs = crispy-soft), but it'd be 4 cups of sifted flour. What I'd recommend to troubleshoot is the following:

1. Softened butter, no need to necessarily melt although that would give you less overall water in the dough and a bit denser dough.
2. As others have said, confirm egg size. When unspecified in American cookies, they typically refer to large (2oz avg) eggs.
3. Sift the flour and go slowly. Stop at 3.5 cups and do a tester bake. Once you find out your ideal flour volume, go ahead and weigh so it's consistent each time, but allow yourself some wiggle room for ambient humidity.
4. Stir just a little bit more than you might typically do to develop a scooch more gluten.
5. Consider refrigerating your dough before baking. This does two things - allows the gluten to develop a weeeee bit more, improves the function of the sugar in the dough, and allows for a longer bake time. That article also has a good point about what type of cookie sheet you're using, but I'd try the other stuff before buying new equipment!
posted by OhHaieThere at 7:00 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Can you test bake some for a minute or two shorter? Baking time really does make a big difference
posted by chocotaco at 3:41 AM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

The OP's recipe was a staple of my family's Christmas baking. I recently introduced friends to these cookies, and I looked to see the OP's location! Haha. I was glad to see the "chewy" recipe, because I prefer soft cookies. But I'll take a crisp lime Jell-O cookie over any cookie, any time!

I think they would be a great bar cookie, and I will try that next year when our organization bakes cookies for vets.

Here is King Arthur Baking's advice on converting drop cookies to bars. I did it with the late great Trader Joe's Cornmeal Cookie mix, and things turned out really well.
posted by jgirl at 5:59 AM on December 21, 2022

Also, this recipe was designed to be pressed. That's why there's so much flour and so little liquid.
posted by jgirl at 6:03 AM on December 21, 2022